Everybody Knows rages through the City of Angels like a broken-dam flood. It’s got it all, but most of all it’s got deep insight. It’s the book everybody’s been waiting for.” —Michael Connelly
“Good lord, this book is fantastic. Everybody Knows is one of the best LA noir novels I've ever read. The writing is astonishingly good. It's a wild, honest, sharp, and suspenseful ride, full of wry observations about the nature of power and the cost of being good in a bad, bad world." —Attica Locke, Edgar Award-winning and bestselling author of HEAVEN, MY HOME and BLUEBIRD, BLUEBIRD
"This tale of a crisis manager's journey of the soul is as bleak as Hollywood noir gets, skewering redemption narratives, romance and idealism. Every sentence sings with heartache."—New York Times Book Review, Best Crime Novels of 2023
"Hollywood noir doesn't get any darker than Jordan Harper's dazzling Everybody Knows, where cynicism is rewarded, romance thwarted and redemption narratives undercut at every turn."—Sarah Weinman, New York Times Book Review
“Harper, a Hollywood writer for more than a decade, perceptively illustrates the contrasts in the entertainment business— “perfect” influencers who hide their drug addictions, giant mansions alongside homeless encampments — and exposes the way people hide desperation under a veneer of fame.” —Washington Post
“Everybody Knows is the best mystery novel I’ve read in years…Jordan Harper writes sentences, and in this case an entire book, that is both terrifying and exhilarating.”—James Patterson
“Jordan Harper’s ‘Everybody Knows’ is a pure hit of neo-noir. It is dark, violent, bold — and romantic as all get out.”—Harlan Coben on the TODAY Show
"It’s more than a crime novel. It’s a fresh take and a hard look at our culture."—Michael Connelly, Wall Street Journal
"A bona-fide page-turner, pings with one-liners and scenes worthy of Raymond Chandler and Nathanael West."—Tom Nolan, Wall Street Journal
"[A] stunning new crime saga… The novel’s scope is expansive, and so is the buzz that comes trailing it…a wholly contemporary story. The dark epic that unfurls in the pages of Everybody Knows makes ‘ripped-from-the-headlines’ crime shows seem quaint by comparison…. poised to be Harper’s breakout novel…" —LA Times
“What a ride! If it were possible for James Ellroy and James M. Cain to produce a bastard love child, it would be Everybody Knows by Jordan Harper. Awash in substance abuse, sex and demented violence, this is the LA of a good drug trip turned very bad.”—Dennis Lehane
"Searing, timely, sprawling, Everybody Knows pulls back Hollywood’s velvet curtain, exposing the sordid machinations on which the industry runs and the seamy complicity which keeps it humming. This is L.A. noir at its most incendiary."—Megan Abbott, bestselling author of THE TURNOUT
"Just as Ellory mastered the atavistic heart of 1950's corruption, so Jordan Harper has mastered articulating the Day-Glo Technicolor nightmare that is postmodern Los Angeles. Everybody Knows is filled with ballsy movers and shakers, of course, but also plastic social media influencers, high-rent hoods, nihilistic cops, and the sorts of lost souls you’ll never forget. Everybody Knows is an absolute tour de force, a trip through an exclusive alluring Hell where everyone gets what they want and just what they deserve.”—S.A. Cosby, bestselling and LA Times Book Prize-winning author of RAZORBLADE TEARS and BLACKTOP WASTELAND
"With Everybody Knows, Jordan Harper takes on the Beast—the monstrous, corrupt, insatiable mass of organs that eats the losers and feeds the winners in capitalist America, with Hollywood as its base of operations. Our guides to this world (our world) are two of its own dirty players, a celebrity publicist with killer instincts and an ex-cop goon for hire, looking for survival and money and maybe, if it's in the cards, a little bit of redemption. It's a juggernaut of a novel, fast and high-impact, with a sense of doomed humor and bright, sharp teeth." —Steph Cha, LA Times Book Prize-winning author of YOUR HOUSE WILL PAY
“Jordan Harper writes like he’s L.A.’s avenging angel. Everybody Knows is timely. It’s timeless. It’s a knockout punch.” —James Kestrel, author of the Edgar Award-winning FIVE DECEMBERS
"A bold new reinvention of Los Angeles noir with the Hollywood publicist as sleuth, trawling through social media feeds and manufactured cover stories to discover the hushed-up truth — where human kindness still flickers alive in a jet-black vision of Tinseltown. Sharply observed, atmospheric, and indelible."—Winnie M Li, author of New York Times book club pick COMPLICIT
"A mesmerizing whodunit, escapist yet thought-provoking.”—Kirkus Reviews
"Combing the brutality of James Ellroy with the poetic sensibility of Raymond Chandler, Harper takes the reader on a searing journey into L.A.’s underworld where truth and righteousness have become irrelevant and only power has currency. This neo-noir is a must read."—Publishers Weekly
"Fans of neo-noir will find a lot to like here, as Harper displays an encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture and Hollywood history as he spins a tale that isn’t just ripped from the headlines—it’s probably predicting them." —BookPage
"Don't be surprised if this utterly compelling thriller, which builds on timeless themes and brings new shading to an iconic landscape, is the noir of the year." —Booklist
"A whip-tight Los Angeles thriller, hardboiled to its innermost core: Mae Pruett is a crisis-management specialist committed to protecting her clients – megawatt movie stars, high-powered politicians, and high-profile Hollywood execs – when she stumbles on a criminal conspiracy that’s breathtaking in its infallibility and reach."—Boston Globe, Best Books of 2023
"Jordan Harper's breathtaking Everybody Knows brings new urgency to the homeland of hardboiled mysteries."—Tampa Bay Times, Best Hollywood Noir
"This gifted practitioner of contemporary Hollywood noir writes with staccato vividness about 'the Beast' the group of corrupt entities that cleans up celebrity messes, and what happens when two of its numbers decide that going 'ugly things for ugly people' isn't the rush it used to be."—Air Mail, 12 Best Mysteries of 2023
“Harper’s dark vision — and it is very dark — imbues ‘Everybody Knows’ with a tight plot that is on fire from the first sentence and believable characters one wants to root for…Harper’s noir vision of L.A. sees the city at its worst but with a sense of hope for its future, enhanced by his evocative writing….‘Everybody Knows’ showcases Harper’s considerable talents.” —Oline Cogdill, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
“Virtuosically written...Consider me shocked and awed.”—AIRMAIL
“I love a Hollywood novel, and this one scratched this month’s itch… I found Tusing’s narrations of Mae’s descent into the Hollywood underbelly rhythmically gripping.”—NY Mag/Vulture, Best Audiobooks of the Month
“this novel, like Ellroy’s work, offers ‘that very sort of complicated, sort of almost Baroque sense where, just when you think it couldn't get any darker or more depraved, he'll peel back another layer.’”—MPR News, Ask a Bookseller with The Poisoned Pen’s Patrick Millikin
"Harper is a skilled plot tactician, and his book is well constructed, and unpredictable nearly to the end….I want to be careful not to give away too much; one of the pleasures of the book is how Harper handles all the twists and turns."—David Ulin, Alta Online
02/24/2023
Mae Pruett gets a charge out of her work as a "black bag" operator for a shady Los Angeles PR firm. She's seen and sanitized it all, concealing the messes and depraved excesses of Hollywood's elites. But things get personal when she sees her boss get shot in an apparent carjacking in front of the Beverly Hills Hotel. Dan had approached her just days earlier with a plan to cash out and exit the rat race; Mae was on her way to meet him and discuss details when he was killed. Sensing something is fishy about his death and the subsequent killing by cops of the gunman, Mae seeks answers. She is joined by her ex, Chris Tamburro, a disgraced cop who works as muscle for another tentacled arm of what they both only half-jokingly refer to as the Beast. Soon their undercover, off-the-books investigation gets noticed by the wrong sort of people and they must run for their lives. VERDICT Hard-bitten, up-to-the-minute dialogue, lovingly written neighborhood-by-neighborhood ride-alongs, and a perfect dose of paranoia and despair fill the pages of this latest from TV producer and writer (Hightown; Gotham) Harper. If readers like James Ellroy, Michael Connelly, T. Jefferson Parker, and really crackin' neo-noirs, Harper's latest novel (after The King of California) will delight and amaze them..—Liz French
★ 2022-12-24
Edgar winner Harper’s deep dive into a netherworld of murder and sexual perversion among LA's elite power wielders evolves from noir fiction into a knotty morality tale.
Mae Pruett whitewashes celebrity clients’ ugliest imbroglios, from an inconvenient black eye to a drug overdose, for a crisis-management firm specializing in "black bag PR.” Former cop Chris Tamburro works for a high-end security firm that stretches the definition of protection to include physical violence. They both accept that they are complicit in secrets and lies but they love the adrenaline rush of their work. Then Mae’s co-worker Dan Hennigan is killed under circumstances she finds suspicious though her bosses don’t, or won’t. Coincidentally, Chris’ boss offers him what initially seems a choice assignment, to use his old police connections to investigate Dan’s killing. But why is the client’s identity a secret? Soon the former lovers are secretly working together without their companies’ knowledge, connecting a growing list of murders to Jeffrey Epstein–style sexual outrages, questionable land deals, and a host of other unsavory dealings by men of seemingly untouchable clout. As the bodies accumulate, a pregnant 14-year-old becomes the “bloody glove—the objective correlative, the one real thing you can point to that makes the lies feel solid.” Harper’s physical descriptions of LA and set pieces with minor characters are cinematic, evoking classic films like The Big Sleep and Chinatown. While Harper’s take is more graphic and emotionally bleak, his writing is witty, elegant, even funny, as in Mae’s hilarious solution for that inconvenient black eye. The heart of the story lies in Mae and Chris’ relationship. As they fall back in love, they each lose the cynical edge they've always relied on. They begin to weigh what ethical boundaries they won’t cross, or stomach others crossing, and what price each is willing to pay in the future.
A mesmerizing whodunit, escapist yet thought-provoking.
06/10/2024
In this fast-paced noir private-investigator suspense novel, Los Angeles public relations "fixer" Mae Pruett solves problems for her clients by wiping social media and using her press contacts to manipulate the story. When her own boss is executed in the street, she must use all her assets, including her ex-boyfriend Chris, a former crooked cop turned security enforcer, to solve the case and ensure her own livelihood against "the Beast," Hollywood's underbelly of millionaires and politicians who consider themselves above the law. Narrators Megan Tusing and William DeMeritt wonderfully narrate the alternating chapters from Mae's and Chris's points of view with clear diction and expressiveness. However, audio-production errors consisting of clipped words and skips keep this title from receiving a starred review. Harper, whose She Rides Shotgun won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, has excelled again with gritty noir that hits hard and is packed with impactful sentences like Mae's mantra, "Nobody talks, but everybody whispers." VERDICT Sure to be a hit with adrenaline and crime-fiction readers. Give to fans of Raymond Chandler and Jonathan Ames.—Sarah Hill
