January 16th6:30pm
RSVP Required - see below
Join us for a walk on the wiiiiild side of crime fiction. We'll tour through the hardboiled classics of Chandler, Cain and Hammett; acquaint ourselves with contemporary masters like Ellroy and Mosley; international noir in translation; the fractured psyches of Thompson and Highsmith; even genre-bending experiments in horror and science-fiction!
We've got something to satisfy any and all tastes for all you darkly depraved delinquents.
This month we'll discuss a classic Philip K Dick tale of drugs, technology, and paranoia, A Scanner Darkly.
“Dick is Thoreau plus the death of the American dream.”—Roberto Bolaño
"A Scanner Darkly is about a descent into the deep fears of our 24-hour consumer society: the twilight of intellectual and emotional collapse...A fascinating portrait of 70s Californian counter-culture."—The Guardian
Bob Arctor is a junkie and a drug dealer, both using and selling the mind-altering Substance D. Fred is a law enforcement agent, tasked with bringing Bob down. It sounds like a standard case. The only problem is that Bob and Fred are the same person. Substance D doesn’t just alter the mind, it splits it in two, and neither side knows what the other is doing or that it even exists. Now, both sides are growing increasingly paranoid as Bob tries to evade Fred while Fred tries to evade his suspicious bosses. In this dystopian future, friends can become enemies, good trips can turn terrifying, and cops and criminals are two sides of the same coin. Caustically funny and somberly contemplative, Dick fashions a novel that is as unnerving as it is enthralling.
Reserve your place with a $5 voucher, redeemable on the night of the book club meeting on any product in store.