Product Description

On his way to Las Vegas to settle a gambling debt, John Stewart is trapped in the tiny desert town of Sierra when his precious '64 Mustang breaks down. Then he meets the beautiful but unscrupulous Grace McKenna, and becomes ensnared in a web of dirty double-crosses, desperate souls and even murder.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2312015 in Books
• Published on: 1997-10-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

From Library Journal
A busted radiator hose strands a drifter in a spooky Nevada town in this first novel from a Hollywood denizen. Soon to be an Oliver Stone movie starring Nick Nolte.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
When John Stewart's "'sixty-four-and-a-half" Mustang convertible breaks down in Sierra, Nevada, in the heart of the desert, on the hottest day of the year, all hell breaks loose. In hock up to his ears, Stewart has come up with the cash to settle with a Vegas shyster--the only thing is, he is stuck in this hellhole of a town where everyone seems mad and that he can't seem to get out of. To complicate matters, he gets mixed up with the bored wife of a rich real estate man who wants her husband dead; a cocky, hot-tempered, jealous local boy who thinks Stewart is hitting on his girl; and a convenience store robbery. To top things off, the mob is coming for him. You get the picture. This nasty piece of work probably owes more to films like Blood Simple and Red Rock West than to James M. Cain and Jim Thompson. Benjamin Segedin

From Kirkus Reviews
A high-concept hybrid mixes The Postman Always Rings Twice with Pulp Fiction, though the result bears none of the brilliant originality of those masterpieces. Newcomer Ridley, now 30, wrote this at 24, and eventually sold a screenplay based on the novel to Oliver Stone. But a reading of this vulgar, unsurprising debut fiction doesn't clarify what attracted Stone to the project in the first place. John Stewart, a wandering gambler who needs $13,000 to save his life from a Vegas hood, stops in the tiny town of Sierra in the boiling Nevada desert to get his ancient Mustang repaired. Sierra, it turns out, is a no-exit hell whose inhabitants are stuck to its environs like flies to flypaper. Everyone suffers from the same agonizing need to escape, as does Stewart, who discovers that once you enter the town, it's almost impossible to leave. Each time he tries to get out of Sierra he ends up even worse off, more battered, bloody, and desperate than before. Jake, a local realtor, offers him a way out- -if Stewart will kill Jake's wife Grace and it look like an accident so that Jake can collect on her double-indemnity insurance policy. Then Grace in turn asks Stewart to murder Jake, offering to split with him the money Jake's stashed under the floorboards of his house. Meanwhile, the Vegas hood dispatches two gunmen to kill Stewart, with orders to do so even if he does repay his gambling losses. Sierra's population consists largely of violent, not-very- bright, sullen losers, all working their own scams of one kind or another, as well as a lustful nymphet and the lascivious Grace. Double cross follows double cross until the deadly fadeout. Stunning drivel. But sell, once the movie is out? You bet. (Film rights to Phoenix Pictures/TriStar) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.