Sick City: A Novel

By Tony O'Neill

“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).

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jul 20, 2010
• ISBN: 9780062006585

Tony O'Neill

Tony O'Neill is the author of Digging the Vein and Down and Out on Murder Mile, and the coauthor of Neon Angel and the New York Times bestseller Hero of the Underground. He lives in New York with his wife and daughter.

Reviews for Sick City

[davewilde-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

If you are looking for a book filled with the tender touching moments of the first blush of young love, this may not be what you have in mind. This book is a story about junkies, meth-heads, detox, rehabs, perverted debaucheries, secret sex tapes, strippers, prostitutes, transvestites, gangbangers, movie producers, television therapists, and, of course, the connection to Sharon Tate. But what sets this book apart from O' Neill's earlier tale of junkie desperation Down and Out on Murder Mile is that here O'Neill has channeled his inner Charles Willeford and conveys the gallows humor of a situation in a quick line or two. Despite the subject matter, there's enough distance from it to taste the bitter dark irony in the different scenes. This book is beautifully crafted, well-paced, and hard to put down. And, it's typical noir, because by the time the final curtain falls, no one here gets out alive or whole.

[waxnyc · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Tony O'Neill's writing makes me think Bukowski and Tarantino got together with a bottle and some blow and let their collective imaginations run wild. Simply brilliant.

[boutabook · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Being from Los Angeles, I enjoyed the local references.This story kept my interest. It was written with humor. However, I have to say that the title says it all; SICK CITYIt was about a bunch of desperate people that lived on the edge. It reminded me of the movie BARFLY. The seedy side of life is the only life some people know.