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dope

DOPE

PUTNAM, 2006

It's 1950, New York City. While the rest of America is driving shiny new Chevrolets to the suburbs, Hell's Kitchen it's business as usual for Josephine Flannigan. Joe's been offered $1000 by a nice suburban couple whose daughter has disappeared into the dope underbelly of New York—a world Joe knows like the back of her hand. Easy money, she thinks. But Josephine's quick payday takes her back into the streets she thought she'd left behind--a harrowing descent that makes it impossible to distinguish friend from foe, and leads her to a choice that will haunt her to the end of her days.
 

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READ WHAT OTHERS SAY:

"As utterly addictive as it's title implies." B & N

"Shocking and satisfying" Bloomberg

"Sara Gran's third novel is one of the meanest, grittiest hard-boiled crime stories ever written... An astonishing novel, one that deserves a place of honor next to Hammett, Thompson and Chandler." Associated Press

"Burroughs meets Hammett...Original and compelling." Kirkus (starred)

"Tight and polished and exquisitely crafted." Robert B. Parker

"Utterly compelling....Entering the world of Dope is like stepping into a favorite film noir." Times Picayune
french dope
"She's good enough not to have to brag.... each person and place comes across as distinct and not a readymade pulp archetype...a tribute to her powers of observation." Newsday

"Like a latter-day Raymond Chandler....This isn't a novel you can prepare yourself for. Nor should you...dark and brooding in the best tradition of noir." New York Daily News
"May be the most surprising read this year." Glamour Magazine

"Brutally realistic, unrelenting, explosive, and as utterly addictive as its title implies." Barnes & Noble

A compulsive, dynamic read, written con brio --a perfect noir pastiche but with a life and character all its own." Kate Atkinson

"If Raymond Chandler knew then what we know now, he might have written a book like this. Highly recommended." Lee Child

"This is truly a major writer who can literally go in any direction she wishes and still be way ahead of anything else being published." Ken Bruen

"Astonishing... Surprising...Sara Gran makes the depths of Manhattan at mid-century her own and writes in a...style that seems, in the best "beat" tradition, simultaneously jaded and naive...A terrific dark yarn." St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"The perfect, perfect, perfect female noir novel I've been wanting to read for all my life." Jenny Davidson

"Gran treats us to a grim but oddly elegiac tour of the good-old, bad-old days." Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review

"A heck of a book [with] lots of self-deprecating humor and....[a] big heart." Detroit Free Press

"Everything, absolutely everything, is pitch-perfect." Sarah Weinman

"A breakout novel in every sense: ambitious, fast-paced, suspenseful, and important. It's also one of the most entertaining mysteries I've read in years." Jason Starr

"A thrilling, heartbreaking journey through the heroin underbelly of 1950s New York. I was more than hooked. I was blown away." Richard Rayner

"Fascinating...Powerful and unexpected...In spare, insightful prose, Gran shows us an entire subculture living in the shadow of the American Dream..." Capital Time

"DOPE may very well be the best book this year." Tribe

"Sara Gran makes artistry appear simple with straight forward prose that blends the grit of the story with an elegant economy of style." David Thayer

"Make room on the noir 'Great Books' shelf" San Diego Union-Tribune

"A clear Beat sensibility...in the controlled, unflappable style of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe." Atlanta Journal Constitution

"Joe Flannigan seems uncomfortably real, with as dark a past as any mystery protagonist in recent memory." Cleveland Plain Dealer