When Bad Apple
stumbles through the door of Smitty’s Chelsea apartment, looking like murder,
Smitty knows his past has caught up with him. Apples is frantic with a story
about a drug deal gone wrong and a dead gangster in his car. He’s begging
Smitty to help dispose of the body and cover up the crime. It’s New York City
1978, Smitty is a guitarist in a rising national punk band, a junkie, yet no
criminal mastermind, but he owes Apples a big favor. Bad Apple is every bit his
name but now he’s whacked someone connected with a crew. Someone known to be
last seen alive with Bad Apple.
Fearing cops and vengeful gangsters,
Smitty decides to get the band on a quick West Coast tour and get the hell out of
Manhattan. During the tour’s debauched anarchy he comes under the wrath of the
southern California cops and busted for possession. Facing prison time and
massive lawyer fees, his genius solution is to go to Peru and smuggle cocaine
back through U.S. Customs in order to raise some quick cash. An East Coast tour
beckons a return to NYC, with the merry punk rock pranksters, body dumps
and too much junk. And the fear
of not so dead gangsters or a holiday at Rikers.
OPIUM KINGS is an 80,000 word novel about a
rock and roll band’s beginnings, rise, implosions and aftermath due to criminal
friends, crooked cops, bad addictions and worse decisions. Filled with rock and
roll hoodlums, subterranean anti-heroes, noir painted imagery, street-smart
action and a touch of Irish wit, it will appeal to fans of Irvine Welsh, Chuck
Palahniuk, Jim Carroll and Jack Kerouac...
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