Kill Dick - by Luke Goebel (Hardcover)

About the Book

"At nineteen, Susie Vogelman should be coasting: she's an NYU dropout with no responsibilities, endless prescription pills, and a Brentwood estate to waste away in. But Los Angeles has other plans. A string of brutal murders targeting addicts spreads through the city, and Susie's ivory tower begins to crumble. The headlines point too close to home: her father's ties to an opioid empire, a sinister secret society, and her own complicity in the systems holding it all together. Then there's Peter Holiday, a disgraced professor running a rehab scam so audacious it's almost admirable. When their lives collide, Susie and Peter are dragged into a web of privilege, corruption, and violence, where every escape leads deeper into the rot. Dark, satirical, and razor-sharp, Kill Dick is a modern literary thriller that unflinchingly dissects wealth, exploitation, and the perilous line between survival and self-destruction"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

"One of two novels Jennette McCurdy wants everyone to read in 2026."--ELLE

"I've read an early copy... I fell in love with the protagonist, and that's what hooked me."--Jennette McCurdy, bestselling author and former actor

"Kill Dick is a love letter to LA's darkness and light."--USA Today

"Kill Dick is the kind of book that makes you want to write. Luke Goebel has written an insane portrait of Los Angeles in the vein of Bret Easton Ellis and Joan Didion. It's a car chase of a novel, where you never want to look away."--Playboy, Top 10 Most Anticipated Books of 2026

"Goebel delivers."--Publishers Weekly

"Shot through with profundity endemic to youthful privilege, Susie's rambling, terminally jaundiced narrative paints a darkly surreal Lynch-and Kubrick-inspired portrait of LA."--Kirkus Reviews

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2026 in LIT HUB and PLAYBOY; featured in the NEW YORK POST's "31 Page-Turning New Thrillers to Read" and on FOX 11's GOOD DAY LA.

At nineteen, Susie Vogelman should be coasting: she's an NYU dropout with no responsibilities, endless prescription pills, and a Brentwood estate to waste away in. But Los Angeles has other plans. A string of brutal murders targeting addicts spreads through the city, and Susie's ivory tower begins to crumble. The headlines point too close to home: her father's ties to an opioid empire, a sinister secret society, and her own complicity in the systems holding it all together.

Then there's Phil Krolik, a disgraced professor running a rehab scam so audacious it's almost admirable. When their lives collide, Susie and Phil are dragged into a web of privilege, corruption, and violence, where every escape leads deeper into the rot.

Dark, satirical, and razor-sharp, Kill Dick is a modern literary thriller that unflinchingly dissects wealth, exploitation, and the perilous line between survival and self-destruction.

Review Quotes

"Kill Dick is a love letter to LA's darkness and light."
--USA Today

"Kill Dick is the kind of book that makes you want to write. Luke Goebel has written an insane portrait of Los Angeles in the vein of Bret Easton Ellis and Joan Didion. It's a car chase of a novel, where you never want to look away."
--Playboy - Top 10 Most Anticipated Books of 2026

"This satirical literary thriller has shades of Joan Didion and Bret Easton Ellis."
--NY Post

One of two books Jennette McCurdy wants everyone to read in 2026
--ELLE

"I've read an early copy of 'Kill Dick'...I fell in love with [the] protagonist, and that's what hooked me."
--Jennette McCurdy - ELLE

One of the most anticipated books of 2026
--Lit Hub

"Shot through with the sort of pseudo-profundity endemic to youthful privilege, Susie's rambling, terminally jaundiced narrative paints a darkly surreal Lynch- and Kubrick-inspired portrait of LA."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Goebel delivers."
--Publishers Weekly

"A novel, confrontation, and movement, all in one. .. Kill Dick resists easy categorization. Darkly humorous and deeply disorienting, toggling between intimacy and distance as it interrogates evil, money, and the limits of resistance in a socio-economic and political landscape that seems to have evolved past morality."
--V Magazine

"Kill Dick captures the reality of a contemporary moment--one of a collective anger with power imbalances, the failed accountability of a ruling class, and a society's perceived helplessness against corruption, all framed through a Baudrillardian lens of the opioid epidemic."
--Flaunt

"Sharp dialogue, razor plotting and fiery sense of Los Angeles"
--South Florida Sun-Sentinel

"A big swing at the great American novel in a time when both taking big swings and the idea of the great American novel are in a free fall of decline... The fictional events and themes of "Kill Dick" feel very timely, a scheme to assassinate a medical business mogul who has made money off pain and addiction, and the ever-widening gap between the ultra wealthy and the destitute."
--Molly Lambert, Los Angeles Times

"Has sparked debate about the limits of free expression"
--Ben Kaplan, San Francisco Today

"Goebel's sharp dialogue, razor plotting and fiery sense of Los Angeles elevate his unconventional characters....a gritty, highly entertaining novel."
--Oline Cogdill, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

"Luke Goebel's novel Kill Dick is both playful and grotesque. The mystery of the murders is weaved around cultural criticism of America today: commercialism, voyeurism, sexual confusion, ideological conflict."
--The Oregonian

"After experiencing firsthand the devastation of opioids, Luke Goebel says he wrote his new novel as a form of 'direct action against the major dicks that kill us all.'"
--VICE

"A piquing parody, the book reveals how easily critique becomes performance and how violence, addiction, and privilege transform into aesthetic currency. Its most vivid moments evince cutting wit."
--Foreword Reviews

"...[an] ambitious blend of social satire and sunshine noir. For readers open to a visionary trip down Hollywood's Boulevard of Broken Dreams."
--Publishers Weekly

"Luke Goebel's delirious debut novel festers in the sun-sick, dissociative Southern California of Joan Didion and Bret Easton Ellis. In Kill Dick, Los Angeles is hell, and Susie Vogelman is its most reluctant angel: vacant, brilliant, heartbreaking."
--Anna Dorn, author of The Really Dead Wives of New Jersey

"KILL DICK is a fever dream. Luke Goebel perfectly captures the consciousness of a certain kind of woman--raw, lonely, desperate, and cinematic. Full of grief and longing, it's got some of the most unforgettable sentences I've ever read. This book makes me want to write a crime novel, move to L.A., or maybe just become a killer. Goebel is something else."
--Harriet Armstrong, author of To Rest Our Minds and Bodies

"From Brentwood to Thai Town, West Adams to Skid Row, Luke Goebel's irresistible KILL DICK draws a deranged--and yet curiously, charmingly relaxed--map of Los Angeles, coming off like a sun-dappled, shaggy cousin of The Shards. Like Eve Babitz before him, he seems to love and understand the city as few do, but Goebel's eye, his sly metafictive wit, and--above all--his language are entirely his own."
--Matthew Specktor, founding editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books and author of Always Crashing in the Same Car (Folio Prize long-listed) and The Golden Hour

"If this book were any better, I'd cut my own head off."
--Ottessa Moshfegh, bestselling author of Eileen (PEN/Hemingway Award winner and major-motion picture), Lapvona, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Death in Her Hands, Homesick for Another World, and McGlue

"Luke Goebel may be one of the last few geniuses we have left in this life. I mean that."
--Scott McClanahan, author of Crapalachia and Hill William

"Finally, a book brave enough to say what we've all been thinking: Dick has got to go."
--Lukas Gage, author of I Wrote This for Attention

"It's like if Joan Didion and Hunter S. Thompson had a love child raised on Oxy and existential dread- impossible to look away from. The prose moves like stolen cash, the world is decadent and rotting at the edges. Honestly, if you're not reading this book, what are you doing? Probably something dull and unpaid. Consider this your invitation to the party-just don't expect to leave unscathed."
--Anna Delvey

"Aglow with more spirit than most Americans have the right to wield."
--Blake Butler

"Kill Dick captures the burning zeitgeist of our times."
--Kimberly King Parsons

"Kill Dick is acerbic, addictive, dizzying, and haunting - it takes every trope of LA art and shoves it. It's a thriller, it's a fever dream of the opioid catastrophe, it's an indictment of pretty much every icon and chestnut of contemporary and postmodern art I can think of, and probably more I'm not sophisticated enough to know about - and the sentences are perfect. A lot of fun, but nauseating. I couldn't put it down."
--Ariana Reines

About the Author

Luke Goebel is a bestselling author and acclaimed screenwriter known for unflinching honesty and innovative storytelling. A recipient of the prestigious Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize and the Joan Scott Memorial Fiction Award, his debut novel, Fourteen Stories, None of Them Are Yours, garnered critical acclaim for its innovative and precisely lyrical, profoundly resonant exploration of love, grief, and the restless search for identity. Goebel also co-wrote the film Eileen, starring Anne Hathaway and Thomasin McKenzie, and the film Causeway, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry (who received an Academy Award nomination for his performance). He is president and co-owner of Tyrant Books, founded by legendary editor Giancarlo DiTrapano. He lives in Oregon, Southern California, and elsewhere.