A Los Angeles slacker becomes apprentice to a crime lord in this “dark and mordantly funny” rampage through the gutters of La La Land (T. C. Boyle).
What could cause Bob to give up his job at a pathology lab that demands so little of him, where he can play Tetris and surf the Web whenever he wants? What could lead him to walk out on a beautiful girlfriend who makes her living as a masturbation coach? What could make him risk everything to transform himself into Roberto, a kingpin in the Los Angeles Mexican mafia? An erotic tattoo—the Mona Lisa of erotic tattoos—painted on a severed arm, which lands in Bob’s lap one fateful morning.
Bob may have fallen for the woman in ink, but he’s not the only one who wants the beefy limb. There’s the telenovela-addicted mobster who lost it, the jefe who needs to keep it out of the clutches of the police, a backstabbing cannabis aficionado/ Wharton grad, and a wine snob LAPD detective who knows the arm is the evidence he needs to bring down the entire Mexican mafia. And all the while Bob is holding onto it for dear life.
As potent as a double-shot margarita, Moist “blend[s] fresh characters, snappy patter, sex, a mind bender of a plot, and a little more sex . . . [in] a killer cocktail of a first novel” (John Ridley).
“Process Carl Hiaasen’s South Florida through an Elmore Leonard filter, then shake well and pour over Los Angeles . . . a terrifically engaging and wonderfully bizarre caper novel.” —Jeremiah Healy, Shamus Award–winning author
“The hard-boiled Los Angeles of Raymond Chandler and James Ellroy spun out in brighter-than-life Starburst colors.” —Los Angeles Times
