This is easily one of my new favourite books. Think 'True Detective' with less functioning Cohle. It's a Southern gothic nightmare. ( )

"She said she had cancer of the liver but cured it with her mind." This book drags in parts but anything that could be described as new age noir is a flan-trap that can't be unsprung. Reads like Billy Wilder via Leonard Cohen. ( )

In which Denis Johnson whips James Ellroy at his own game. Well, perhaps it isn't exactly fair to compare these two writers: Ellory's doesn't hide the fact that his fiction is historical and decidedly nostalgic, while Johnson sets his book among contemporary post-hippie Californians. Even so, despite the fact that "Already Dead" has more than its share of problems, it does the "evil beneath the warm sunshine" thing much better than Ellroy does. The difference is most decidedly in the prose. Most thrillers are said to be disposable -- quick to write and easy to read, and heavy on the stock characters and situations -- Johnson's prose here is dense, knotty, intricate and occasionally incendiary but I got the impression that the author invested vast amounts of energy and time into this novel. The prose has a weight -- an imposing sort of self-propelled force -- that makes it worth reading, even if thrillers, or the seamy side of literature, isn't your thing. His description of the physical features of coastal California's landscape: it's weird beauty, it's fecundity, it's inaccessibility and its loneliness, are particularly skillful, as are his descriptions of the place's loose, acid drenched, and slightly sinister vibe. I imagine that readers who appreciate the quirkier elements in T. Coraghassen Boyle's novels will find a lot to like in "Already Dead." The author's going for an almost narcotic sense of unreality here, I think, and much of the time I think he achieves it.

This isn't to say that the novel itself is entirely successful. I like Johnson's modern take on the noir: where you expect streetwise sharpies, he gives you washed out, decidedly rural bumblers. The demons they face -- listlessness, self-indulgence, drugs, and seductive New Age belief systems -- probably weren't all that familiar to Dashiell Hammet's protagonists. Johnson's characters are badly flawed: casualties of the social shifts of the nineteen sixties and of their own awful family histories, but I sometimes had trouble judging the author's intent. Is Van Ness, an aspiring Nietzschean, there to provide the critique of a philosophy or a commentary on the nature of evil, or are his ideas just window-dressing on an ordinary villain? Do the book's central protagonists say something about the cultural shift that the United States underwent since the mid-sixties, or are they merely a bunch of freaks with bad histories and substance abuse issues? It can be difficult to tell, and this ambiguity sometimes weighs the book down. Whatever other similarities this book shares with genre literature, efficiency isn't one of them. For all its astonishingly fresh, boundary-breaking prose, the book often feels slow and draggy, and I imagine that some readers may abandon it before they reach its last page. Still, if you're interested in good modern writing, or unconventional crime stories, or literature about California, or are just interested in the macabre, "Already Dead" might be a book that you need to read. ( )

parts of this are great, and some of the scenes could happen in no other setting between people from no where else in the world. Another reviewer said it better than I can " literature has to be more than just wild characters with wild stories" I wasn't exactly expecting great literature when I picked this up and I was surprised by the book's literary intent, but I'd still rather read [practical demonkeeping] for the tenth time. ( )

Denis Johnson. Denis fucking Johnson! How can you smile like some frat boy on the back of your book? You have truths and demons and angels in your head! How can you smile so smugly? With this book you have given me hope for modern literature. You have given me hope for art, for humanity. Of all of the living writers (I should specify fiction writers) that I rate seriously talented: 1) Nick Tosches, 2) Denis Johnson; 3) A.M. Homes; 4) Madeline Gins; 5) Deborah Levy. That's it. There are no more! "Already Dead" is a screaming mugging of Nietzsche's "Thus Spake Zarathustra". It is a mind-blowing bitch-slap to today's modernity. Thank you Denis, smile and all. You've got it. For good or evil, you have it. ( )