Hello everyone
I’ve got a book suggestion for you this month: Everybody Knows by Jordan Harper.
So why should you read Everybody Knows (and by implication, why should you keep reading this email)? In short, because the book is fresh and very current. It feels very real and it’s also one heck of a good read.
Let me tell you some more…
Introducing Mae
Mae Pruett is a “black-bag” publicist at a Hollywood crisis PR firm. She covers up the dirt, suppresses stories, puts out alternative tales, and pays kill fees to make stories disappear. Her firm’s clients are rich and corrupt with much to lose.
She was recruited by Dan, the man who is now her boss. His pitch when he recruited her was that she would be on the inside—she would get to know all the secrets.
Nobody talks, but everybody whispers.
While Mae makes a living out of sleaze and is skilled in the dark arts dishonesty, there’s a point at which her conscience pricks. But this isn’t a story of pricking conscience leading a character to the path of righteousness—Mae doesn’t make that choice. Instead, we also see Mae’s greed and her desperation to survive the consequences of that greed. The ambiguous motives and her internal conflict give a real depth to the story.
The Turning Point
The story turns when Dan—who is even more sleazy than Mae—tries to recruit Mae for a scheme he has in mind. The scheme is highly risky—and given the two characters, will be dirty—but it offers both a chance to make money. Change-your-life amounts of money.
However, before Dan can lay out his plan to Mae, he is murdered.
The death leaves Mae trying to find what Dan’s plan was while suspecting that he was murdered in connection with the plan, making every step Mae takes that much more dangerous.
The World of Everybody Knows
All of the characters in Everybody Knows are unmoored from usual social mores—they’re either someone who thinks that the rules should not apply to them or someone fixing it for the rules not to apply to their paymaster.
While unmoored, every character is very aware of those mores and will do what is necessary to create the appearance of conformity. If a character needs to kill (or pay someone else to kill) in order to cover for their actions, they will. And so, we have a world where lesser (albeit still serious) crimes are covered by the most extreme crimes.
Where “reasonable” is not a concept, danger is amplified and small mistakes can have catastrophic consequences—both for the person making the mistake and for anyone involved in the mess, however innocent they may be.
Needless to say, in this world, there is violence and much bad language. This is not a book for the squeamish.
Style
One other aspect to this book is the style. It is a novel written with the attitude and swagger as befits the story it is telling.
It might be the kind of book Raymond Chandler would be producing if he were writing today and hints at the effervescence of James Ellroy at his peak.
The style doesn’t quite work in a few places, but having dealt with the basics (strong characters and compelling story driven by conflict), I think Harper can be forgiven.
Until March
That’s me for this month, I’ll be back in March.
Until then, check out Everybody Knows, you’ll be pleased that you’ve found Jordan Harper.
All the best
Simon