Sick City - by Tony O'Neill (Paperback)

About the Book

"Sick City is fun, twisted and brutal....O'Neill could be our generation's Jim Thompson."-- James Frey, author of Bright Shiny Morning "Tony O'Neill works his L.A. people the way Dutch Leonard had his hand down the pants of every degenerate in his great Detroit novels."-- Barry Gifford, author of Wild at Heart From Tony O'Neill, the author of Down and Out on Murder Mile and coauthor of theNeon Angeland the New York Times bestselling Hero of the Underground, comes Sick City--a wild adventure of two junkies, Hollywood, and the Sharon Tate sex tape. Readers of Elmore Leonard (Get Shorty) and Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting) will take great delight in Sick City, "a disturbingly twisted ride through Hollywood's underbelly with a degenerate cast of colorfully interwoven characters" (Slash).

Book Synopsis

"Sick City is fun, twisted and brutal....O'Neill could be our generation's Jim Thompson."
-- James Frey, author of Bright Shiny Morning

"Tony O'Neill works his L.A. people the way Dutch Leonard had his hand down the pants of every degenerate in his great Detroit novels."
-- Barry Gifford, author of Wild at Heart

From Tony O'Neill, the author of Down and Out on Murder Mile and coauthor of the Neon Angel and the New York Times bestselling Hero of the Underground, comes Sick City--a wild adventure of two junkies, Hollywood, and the Sharon Tate sex tape. Readers of Elmore Leonard (Get Shorty) and Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting) will take great delight in Sick City, "a disturbingly twisted ride through Hollywood's underbelly with a degenerate cast of colorfully interwoven characters" (Slash).

From the Back Cover

Meet Jeffrey and Randal, two desperate junkies and your guides on this top-to-bottom fun-house tour of Hollywood's underbelly. From infamous crime scenes to celebrity treatment centers, Sick City is an outrageous page-turning adventure set in the sun-bleached wilds of LA.

Review Quotes

"Tony O'Neill is one of my favorite new writers, and DOWN AND OUT ON MURDER MILE is his best book yet. In O'Neill's wizardlike hands, all the drugs and sex, the fierce fights and shouts and blaring rock & roll, amount to a story both horrifying and beautiful." - Scott Heim, author of Mysterious Skin and We Disappear
"Told with unwavering honesty, it is the perfect description of the lifestyle, and not surprising from a man who has lived it. Down and Out on Murder Mile is a force to be reckoned with." - Sacramento Bee
"Reading it, I could taste the LA smog. Here pain comes at you like a mack truck--relentless and unavoidable. Don't blink--keep reading." - Dan Fante, author of Chump Change, Mooch, and Spitting of Tall Buildings
"Like the bastard child of Dashiell Hammett and Evelyn Waugh....With Sick City, Tony O'Neil confirms his comic voice....If dark humor, punk sensibility, literary sophistication and pointed satire are among your addictions, you should find Sick City a rewarding read." - The Rumpus.net
"Like a Robert Altman film scripted by Charles Bukowski and William S. Burroughs...Sick City is appealing in its unsentimentalism, disgusting in its details--and, almost unbelievably, funny." - Booklist
"Addictive Noir! Rarely do you find a novel that is both fast paced and well observed, action packed, yet high-grade poetic. Once you start it, just try putting it down." - Arthur Nersesian, author of The F*ck Up
"[An] inspired comedy of errors...a post-punk crack at Hollywood's legacy that's funnier than its predecessor, and just as cringe-inducing...infused with enough black humor to make Bill Burroughs choke on his apple" - Kirkus Reviews
"A wildly fun read." - Willamette Week
"You may feel disturbed by this very realistic account of addicts on a mission." - CurledUp.com
"What Sick City does is takes the grit and grime of, say, Naked Lunch by William Burroughs and makes it coherent...within the context of a caper novel, as imagined by Elmore Leonard....Sick City makes Jim Thompson's novels look like Little Golden Books." - Bookreporter.com
"Tony O'Neill writes about the Hollywood I know as well as any writer alive. His characters are a punch in the face, scorchingly real. His dialogue is note-perfect and could only have been lived in the moment-by-moment life of one who has sat on a curb and pondered his next jive and shuck while searching for cigarette butts" - Dan Fante, author of 86'd
"Reading Tony O'Neill is like traveling downhill in a car with no lights at terrific speed and driven by a four-year-old child on meth. The signposts along the way are all marked 'Nowhere.'" - Sebastian Horsley, author of Dandy in the Underworld
"Tony O'Neill writes about the Hollywood I know as well as any writer alive. His characters are a punch in the face, scorchingly real. His dialogue is note-perfect." - Dan Fante, author of 86'd
"Tony O'Neill works his L.A. people the way Dutch Leonard had his hand down the pants of every degenerate in his great Detroit novels. Cover your ears, ladies; thanks to O'Neill, the cries of pain can be heard from one sick city to another. Just use your eyes." - Barry Gifford, author of Wild at Heart
"Sick City is fun, twisted and brutal. One of the best books written about LA in a long time. O'Neill could be our generation's Jim Thompson." - James Frey, author of Bright Shiny Morning
"O'Neill delivers a Hollywood thriller that's equal parts acerbic social commentary à la Burroughs's Naked Lunch and extraordinary crime fiction misadventure....Fans of Chuck Palahniuk and Warren Ellis will cherish this twisted tale." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A tragic but hilarious redemption story . . . This book is not for reading. It is for injecting." - Blackbook magazine
"I f**king loved it -- the piss-soaked floors, the vomit-impastoed car interiors, the groans and grunts from every room. It's like some weirdly loveable purgatory." - Tom McCarthy, author of Remainder
"Sick City is a disturbingly twisted ride through Hollywood's underbelly with a degenerate cast of colorfully interwoven characters. I loved the whole f**ked up journey." - Slash
"Finishing DOWN AND OUT ON MURDER MILE hurts. O'Neill paints a vividly original picture of addiction and recovery that made my veins thirst and my heart worry." - Josh Kilmer-Purcell, author of Candy Everybody Wants and I Am Not Myself These Days
"Drugs! Debauchery! Destitution! Domestic bliss! Into the burned-out shooting gallery of narcotic noir, Down and Out On Murder Mile comes raging like a crack-fueled demon, breathing new life into the genre as it careens from low-end Hollywood to subterranean London, musical sort-of stardom to zombied-out methadone maintenance. Woven through it all is an epic love story at once wrenching, raunchy, and weirdly, wildly life-affirming. Tony O'Neill writes like a man with his tongue in a light socket and his toe in a puddle of spilled blood. I fucking loved this book!" - Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight