Fake Liar Cheat (Paperback)

by Tod Goldberg (Author) "We sit in restaurants creating, modifying, extracting..." (more)
Key Phrases: Staff Genius, Los Angeles, Bill Jennings (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Short fiction writer Goldberg's smarmy, self-congratulatory debut novel breaks little new ground in its quest to debunk shallow American notions of celebrity, materialism and self-fulfillment. His protagonist, Lonnie Milton, is the quintessential armchair nihilist. A 26-year-old denizen of Los Angeles, he's a fashionably cynical young man with a cushy sinecure of a job (he interviews and places temp workers), and no discernible ambition. When he meets the enigmatic and beautiful Claire Gooden, Lonnie finds himself helplessly smitten. Soon, he joins Claire in her favorite activity: dining at L.A.'s most fashionable restaurants and skipping out on the tab. One wouldn't think that this kind of juvenile behavior would instill the masses with revolutionary fervor, but in Goldberg's parodic universe, that's precisely what it does. Legions of poor, disenfranchised fools spring up, calling themselves "Lonnie's Army" and devoting themselves to that worthiest of causes, stealing food from posh eateries. In the midst of this massive social upheaval, Lonnie manages to get ditched by Claire, framed for the murder of a wealthy Middle Eastern tycoon, and pursued by L.A.'s infamous boys in blue. What follows is, more or less, a primer in puerile Gen-X satire 101, as filtered through a Bret Easton Ellis-like, brand-name-dropping sensibility. Goldberg's characters are cardboard and unsympathetic, his prose hollowly minimalist. Even worse, some of his plot devices seem to have wandered in from Chuck Palahniuk's superior Fight Club; Goldberg goes so far as to allow Lonnie's intonation of anti-consumerist phrasesD"Nike, the all-knowing Nike, the all-fearing, all-loving, all-the-clothes-I'll-ever-need Nike, tells me Just Do It"Decho the rhetorical style of Palahniuk's own priceless creation, Tyler Durden. This kind of derivative plotting and speechifying could surely have sunk Fair Liar Cheat; surely, that is, but for the fact that withered humor and sophomoric attempts at social relevancy have already done the job. (July)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Entertaining, movie-thin comedy not out to change your life, only to offer an amusing read, which it does with high success.Like Val, who hires and fires for the Cosmodemonic telegraph company in Tropic of Capricorn, Lonnie Milton, 25, is a rising supervisor at L.A.'s Staff Genius, a company that releases temps as if at random into the mazes of La-La-Land. Lonnie's aging supervisor, Julie, has been taking lots of sick leave and entrusting the company to Lonnie and his lackadaisical drinking buddy Charlie--though how they keep their sales numbers up is a mystery. One night Lonnie meets drop-dead gorgeous Claire Goodens (née Hilary Peck), who introduces Lonnie to the highest high life in L.A., all of it stolen. At trendy Intermezzo, they run up a dinner bill of $670 plus tip, then stiff the waiter and blithely take off in a waiting cab. The waiter, fired for not having enough money to repay the restaurant, turns up at Staff Genius, looking for a job from Lonnie. When Lonnie sends Claire out to fill a temp job, she semi-seduces the boss; Lonnie blackmails him (splitting with Claire the $1,500 down payment); and the boss leaps from his office window. These shenanigans, and his later identification as a restaurant terrorist, lead Lonnie to get violently evicted from his apartment, to come near death after an overdose of painkillers on top of alcohol, to lose his own job, to become a murder suspect, and to turn into the culture-hero darling of TV news.The killer climax mixes Steinbeck's Tell me about the rabbits, George with Thelma and Louise's high-flying electricity. A perfect trade paperback with all the sleaze and glamour of the old paperbacks of 50 years ago. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: MTV; First Edition edition (July 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743400569
• ISBN-13: 978-0743400565
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #293,935 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Next Generation is Here, June 15, 2000

By A Customer

Fake Liar Cheat is a wild ride. Tod Goldberg knows his Hollywood and he knows his dead-end jobs and he knows bad, bad, women. Put it all together and you've got one of the funniest books of the year. By far the best MTV title I've read because it isn't filled with GenX angst...instead its filled with actual angst. Besides, any book that contains a line dissing The Real World and is still put out by MTV deserves some measure of credit. A major work by a big time player in the next century of fiction.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hot New Noir, September 21, 2000

By A Customer

Hot damn! Anyone who likes the classic noir writers across the decades will eat up the first-novel pageburner "Fake Liar Cheat" by Tod Goldberg, one of a new series of Pocketbooks/MTV collaborations. The book begins with a chance encounter by temp-employment recruiter and wage-slave Lonnie Milton with a woman at one of those coffee-shop megabookstores -- and is suddenly shot out of the cannon with a blazing burst of wierdness reminsicient of Charles Willeford and Jim Thompson (combined!). What I thought was probably a ho-hum Hollywood nothing book started increasingly rearing up as a real thriller, with a well-worked plot, great characterization, pacing, and dialogue. (Elmore Leonard fans go 'head!) I read the 162 pages in one sitting. The other authors I mentioned are not intended as a comparison or implication of imitation, but if you like those tough guys, you will love this one! To even mention anything about the plot of this book would spoil it for you -- just go get the blessed thing and read it! It's great movie material, already sold, according to another review on this site -- I just hope they stay faithful to the book, including the ending, which in fine form does not compromise itself commercially. It made me want to check out the other books in Pocketbooks/MTV series. Pocketbooks has always been on the cutting edge of paperbacks and Goldberg is worthy of the imprimatur. Hope Goldberg can keep up this momentum in his career -- it could be the start of a beautiful friendship for a lot of readers.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Ehhh -- another MTV entry, November 29, 2004

By	Steve Tyler (Long Branch) - See all my reviews

I don't know, maybe it's me but I just can't seem to get overly excited about these MTV books. They all seem basically they same to me, all pandering to the MTV generation of Britney Spears non-readers. They must be doing a good job though because we keep buying their books.

Fake Liar Cheat was okay. Nothing more than that. It reminded me of other MTV books that I've read in the past in that a lot of its plot lines and characters were unrealistic and underdeveloped. This book does its job of helping to pass the time, but anything beyond that is a stretch. If you're looking for good indie reading that is as believable as it is powerful, then I always recommend reading Dylan Raskin. These MTV books are just for passing time while waiting for the doctor.