Everybody Knows: A Novel

Name: Everybody Knows: A Novel
SKU: 127325
Availability: InStock

4.1 | 2,433 ratings

Price: 19.1

Last update: 09-01-2024

About this item

In this “hardboiled mystery” (Maureen Corrigan) from an Edgar Award winning author, a fearless black-bag publicist exposes the belly of the L.A. beast.

Welcome to Mae Pruett’s Los Angeles, where “Nobody talks. But everybody whispers.” As a “black-bag” publicist tasked not with letting the good news out but keeping the bad news in, Mae works for one of LA’s most powerful and sought-after crisis PR firms, at the center of a sprawling web of lawyers, PR flaks, and private security firms she calls “The Beast.” They protect the rich and powerful and depraved by any means necessary.

After her boss is gunned down in front of the Beverly Hills Hotel in a random attack, Mae takes it upon herself to investigate and runs headfirst into The Beast’s lawless machinations and the twisted systems it exists to perpetuate. It takes her on a roving neon joyride through a Los Angeles full of influencers pumped full of pills and fillers; sprawling mansions footsteps away from sprawling homeless encampments; crooked cops and mysterious wrecking crews in the middle of the night.

Edgar Award-winner Jordan Harper’s Everybody Knows is addicting and alarming, a “juggernaut of a novel” and “an absolute tour de force.” It is what the crime novel can achieve in the modern age: portray the human lives at the center of vast American landscapes, and make us thrill at their attempts to face impossible odds.

Recommended by New York Times Book Review NPR/Fresh Air Wall Street Journal Washington Post LA Times CrimeReads Alta Online Lit Hub Kirkus Reviews Publishers Weekly NBC/TODAY and many more!

An ABA January 2023 Indie Next List Pick

A NYTBR Editors' Choice Selection

"The book everybody's been waiting for"—Michael Connelly

"An absolute tour de force"—S. A. Cosby

"The best mystery novel I've read in years"—James Patterson

David W Putnam

A great read

Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2023

A solid five stars.
I have read all my life, sometimes a hundred and fifty books a year. An avid reader. Everybody Knows is the first book that has spoken to me in regard to Los Angeles (as a place), as a three--dimensional character with a voice all its own. This city character is filtered through the eyes of the others with their own profound take on a strange, unique world. In this story Los Angeles is a living breathing brute, a fiend, a beast. People live inside this beast and try to survive. Truly amazing. This one is going to be nominated for some awards.
The prose and the voice hark back to the best of James Elroy. This writing is amped, like it’s on speed or coke. With only two alternating points of view the story is extremely easy to follow.
The story is fast paced and never for a moment gives the reader a chance to take a breath. No chaff, no fluff just head-on crash-into-a-wall story telling.
I don’t know if this book is meant to be an anti-hero story but for me, both characters lack any redeeming qualities. In fact, I’m not sure any of the characters in the book have redeeming qualities, (except the girl they are trying to rescue). This book also has an interesting structure, the true antagonist doesn’t raise his ugly head until halfway through the book. Until then, the two hero’s (use the term heroes loosely here) follow the trail of carnage.
The glimpse of how Hollywood fixers respond, assess, and spin a screwup caused by an a beloved Hollywood Icon is truly worth the price of admission. The incidences are gritty and all too real.
I really loved, “She Rode Shotgun,” by this author, (one of my favorites the year it came out), this book is nothing like it. Doesn’t matter though. This is truly the kind of book when you open it you strap-in and hold on.
One trope I didn’t really care for, one used far too often in storylines, movies and books is the ol’ “I won’t tell you now, I’ll tell you tomorrow.” But tomorrow never comes. That person is dead, and the protagonists have to figure out what was going to be told. If this concept is buried in a solid motivation it doesn’t matter, but in this novel, no reason was ever given as to the, “why,” he couldn’t tell us until later.
Another great read by this author and I’ll be again waiting in line when his next one arrives.
David Putnam author of The Bruno Johnson series.

Susie Paul

so sharp

Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2024

This is one smart book. The style is clipped and contemporary, the imagery true to a particular time and place, as far as I can tell. I do believe in the ugliness exposed, the power of money. And the ruthlessness. Can’t wait for a sequel to this mystery.

David Fanning

Loved the story….for the most part

Reviewed in the United States on July 28, 2023

I really enjoyed this book until that last few chapters, so many twists at the end as if the plot was trying too hard to be unpredictable. The end was a big letdown. I wasn’t looking for a fairytale ending, there was just too much scorched earth and bridges burned relative to what the plot was building towards.

Richard B. Schwartz

The Crime Novel of the Year

Reviewed in the United States on February 1, 2024

Jordan Harper’s new novel is an absolute stunner, the best crime novel of 2023. The fact that it did not receive the Edgar Award from MWA (and the fact that it was not even nominated) is an enormity of the highest order, one exacerbated by the fact that the book which received the award was really not even a crime/mystery/suspense novel.

EVERYBODY KNOWS is that magnificent combination of a book that feels entirely fresh but leverages strength from the finest traditions of crime fiction. It concerns a young woman named Mae Pruett who works for an organization that helps suppress the potential after-effects of actions that range from the reprehensible to the absolutely evil. It hides evidence, suppresses facts, manipulates the media, both traditional and social. It is networked with a series of organizations, including those that do actual wet work and those which perpetrate the evil itself. Mae calls this network the ‘beast’ and in the course of her story we come to realize the helplessness of those who would oppose the beast’s work. This notion of interconnected evil on the large scale is, ultimately, essential to Chandler’s vision of the city of the (fallen) angels, though he focused on the relationships between big crime, big unions, big business and big law enforcement.

The conclusion toward which Mae’s experience is accelerating is one of what Ellroy calls ‘tragic realism’ and the voice of Ellroy is everywhere here, though the subject is contemporary, not historical, and the language is less compressed and more accessible. Here’s a taste:

Polygraphs don’t detect lies. They detect fear.

Xanax burps scald the back of his throat. Ten milligrams—kiddie dosage—just enough to tamp down the heebie-jeebies. Yokoyama fixes the straps on his chest. He smells like one of those rich-people candles. Chris tries to focus on the way his breath hits cool at the back of his nasal cavity. He lets the Xan do what it does.

This is coupled with a sense of setting that is as powerful as any with which I am familiar. Los Angeles is not Jordan Harper’s original home, but he is now so immersed in it that its ethos and vibe oozes from his every pore. He knows the cult foods, the vegan specialties, the ethnic bodegas, the new plastic surgeries on offer and the hooker strolls. He knows the language from the street argot to the upscale idiomatic expressions. A momager (p.123) is a mother who also serves as a child’s manager. Shatter (p.310) is high-grade hash cooked with butane. This is the place where people pray in what is explicitly called ‘a cold and godless universe’ (p.131). And he knows the streets, the neighborhoods, the traffic and the manner in which they enable, shape, constrict and canalize behavior.

Bill Bennett was told by his college English professor to rest up and prepare himself for what would become a physically and emotionally enervating experience; they were about to read KING LEAR. I would repeat that advice here, but (mini-SPOILER) promise the reader a plausible ending that carries with it the essence of redemption.

Bottom line: prepare yourself to be moved, informed and amazed. This is the real deal. In some ways we are watching the torch of greatness being passed to firm, young hands.

Frank C

Enjoyed it!

Reviewed in the United States on August 11, 2024

This is a great read. Very clever premise. Timely.

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