Steve Aylett
The Crime Studio

The critics on Steve Aylett:
"Both the bullets and the gags fly fast and furious in Steve Aylett's hyperkinetically violent, hilarious time-traveling crime caper.… While the body count is high, the tone is anything but grim, thanks to Aylett's wickedly funny commentary on the bullet-riddled, nihilistic metropolis and its inhabitants." — New York Times Book Review		"Characters spark off one another like flints in a spin dryer. Out spew images as shiny and as perfect as new-minted coins.… How, you wonder, did we ever do without these phrases? … A jaw-droppingly dark and funny work." — The Guardian (U.K.) "Aylett is an author to watch." — Publishers Weekly

In the city of Beerlight, "Every crime is as unique as a snowflake.…"

If Steve Aylett were a filmmaker he'd be Quentin Tarantino, if he were a painter he'd be Jackson Pollock, and if he were a talk show host he'd be Oprah Winfrey … er, better make that Jerry Springer, actually. Luckily for us he became a writer.

A rising star on both sides of the Atlantic, Aylett has established himself as an artist with the capacity to electrify critics and readers alike. He is blessed with a bombastic imagination, an irresistible comic sensibility, and a felicity with language that has earned comparisons to such innovators as Jonathan Lethem, William S. Burroughs, James Ellroy, and Oscar Wilde. (Just please don't compare him to Updike, thank you very much.)

Now available in the U.S. for the first time, The Crime Studio is the book of interconnected stories that introduced the world to Beerlight, and the book that gave birth to such favorites as: Sally the Gat ("The first person to call her Sally the Gat was shot at such close range the cops drew a chalk body-outline on the ceiling."); Brute Parker ("There's nothing so degrading as being killed by a stranger. It wrecks continuity. Murder should occur among friends."); Bleach Pastiche ("Her mouth was so red I had to regard it through a welding mask."); and Jerry Diesel ("He had more connections than a plate of spaghetti."). Fast, smart, and more outrageous than a mime in a miniskirt, The Crime Studio is a modern classic and a model of postmodern sci-noir.

Steve Aylett is the author of Slaughtermatic (a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award), Toxicology, and most recently, Atom. Born in 1967, he lives in England.

$14.95 | paperback original | 156 pages | ISBN: 1-56858-148-3
Fiction | Science Fiction