‘Price You Pay’ by Aidan Truhen
WHO: Aidan Truhen
(a pseudonym for a previously published writer)
WHAT: THE PRICE YOU PAY, a novel
WHEN: Published by Knopf July 10, 2018
WHERE: The author lives in London.
WHY: “A blistering fast, rat-a-tat urban thriller starring a fast-tongued white-collar criminal who might be crazy.
“Jack Price is a relative nobody who deals high-end coke to anyone who can afford it. Things go awry when someone clips Jack’s downstairs neighbor, an old lady named Didi, and then sends some goons around to beat him up. Technically, there’s a plot here somewhere—something involving a rich do-gooder named Sean Harper and an Icelandic dark web portal called Poltergeist — but it’s really just window dressing to set a gang of assassins called Seven Demons on Jack’s ass. But Jack, though sweet on his lawyer, Sarah, is homicidally crafty in his own way, for instance, keeping a crazy homeless man locked in a warehouse wearing clothes covered in knives, you know, just in case. Or buying a bunch of competing cocaine, cutting it with anthrax, and then slinging it back into circulation. Or shooting his own dirty cop for nothing more than expedience: ‘We hug. And then I shoot him in the face. Small caliber goes phht and one of his eyes goes red and that’s it. Sorry not sorry.’
“Jack’s fast-paced, expletive-heavy monologue works overtime as he faces down his foes one by one, among them a street fighter, his own enforcer, a shadowy sniper, and a preternaturally gifted, semi-psychotic sex doctor who practices her own dark arts on Jack. Piquant with its Tarantino-light aesthetics and a narrative voice that recalls early Charlie Huston.” –KIRKUS REVIEWS
“This novel has high-octane everything. It’s a witty, gory, whiplash revenge tale narrated by a brilliantly entertaining sociopath. You’re mortified by the things you find yourself laughing at – and when you turn the page, there’s more. Guess what: you keep laughing.” —Carl Hiaasen
“Jack Price is as despicable as he is creative. He’s a Machiavellian drug dealer who doesn’t just get even when he is wronged. Massive retaliation is what he knows best — and does it in a way that would make John Dulles proud.” —John Vorhees
. . . . .
FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE BOOK:
I’m ordering a latte macchiato because Didi is dead and that is sad. It’s not like horrible sad but it’s sad. She was an old lady and actuarially she didn’t have long but it looks like someone couldn’t wait. It’s the kind of thing makes you uncomfortable in your neighbourhood and it’s the kind of thing that’s bad for business and just fuck it who needs this crap? It leaves open questions is what I’m saying and open questions are upsetting to a certain kind of person and that kind of person is the kind that I am. So coffee while I reflect on this situation that I do not like.
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Knopf. 277 pages. $26.95
ISBN 978-1-5247-3337-7
To interview the author, contact:
Abigail Endler | 212-572-2015 | aendler@penguinrandomhouse.com