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Love Is a Racket
by John Ridley, Peter Jay Fernandez
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Recorded Books (1998-11-01)
ISBN: 0788788353
EAN: 9780788788352
Dewy Decimal #: 813
Audio Cassette
Edition: Unabridged
SKU: C134OSC
Condition: Used: Good
Comments: Ex-Library, with the usual library markings. Great Audio Book! Relax and listen to it during your commute to work or on long trips. 9 tapes. 100% satisfaction guaranteed. All orders include an e-Book about starting your own Internet Business in PDF format. FREE Domestic DELIVERY CONFIRMATION! We ship daily Mon-Sat and will let you know when your item has shipped along with your e/DC number. [HI, AK, PR, VI, GUAM, SAIPAN & West Coast customers, please use Expedited Shipping, otherwise it may take longer than the estimated 14 business days.] Items are from a smoke free and air conditioned environment.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
In his first novel since Stray Dogs, John Ridley offers up a brilliant noir farce about a small-time con man who finally gets it right just before it all goes wrong.
Everything's a racket for Jeffty Kittridge, a thirty- seven-year-old ex-wannabe scriptwriter living on the skids in Hollywood--the two-bit cons he pulls for spending money; the way he convinces himself that he's not a drunk between every shot of booze he kicks back; the way he tries to assure Dumas, the local shark, that he's just about to pay off his 15K debt . . . Except he's not good at any of that. He's been in jail twice (and the state's got a bad attitude about seeing someone the third time); that bug he just felt crawling up his neck is most likely the first installment of the DTs; and Dumas recently delivered a fairly emphatic payment-due reminder: a couple of his goons busted two of Jeffty's fingers. The fact is, Jeffty's a loser, big as they come, and things aren't about to change up for him anytime soon: "I would've felt . . . near terminally depressed," he tells us as his story begins to unfold, "but I was so used to my life all I felt was content."
Then he stumbles on salvation: a dirt-caked, street-hardened, exquisitely beautiful young homeless woman named Mona--Jeffty prefers to think of her as Angel--who inspires both his love and the idea for the perfect con. It's Jeffty's chance to hit it big, and to be set for good in his new life with his new love. "The thing about love," Jeffty declares, "is no matter how twisted, or wrong, or evil, it never dies." But as the momentum of the con carries him closer and closer to what he imagines will be a moment of blissed-out consummation with his angel Mona, Jeffty discovers there are some severe exceptions to his rule.
Smart, edgy, caustically funny, Love Is a Racket puts John Ridley in a darkly comic league of his own.
From the Hardcover edition.
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Amazon.com Review
At several points Love Is a Racket is outright offensive in its depiction of Jeffty Kittridge's Hollywood skid-row world. Yet, Jeffty's narrative voice is so compelling, so real, that you want to know how he makes out. The novel begins with Ty--a heavy working for the local loan shark, Dumas--breaking Jeffty's fingers. The fingers become a symbol of Jeffty's relentless bad luck as he tries and fails time and again to make the $15,000 he owes Dumas. Years ago, the reader discovers, Jeffty had come to Hollywood as an aspiring scriptwriter (a life that Jonathan Ridley lived, ultimately writing episodes of Martin, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and The John Laroquette Show), but he now declares himself a grifter, a gambler, and, gradually, a drunk. Several roads to salvation emerge in Jeffty's nightmare life. At one point, it seems that a day at the races just might erase his debts. His "friend," Nellis, reappears at another moment--a junkie and, strangely, a master of Zen poker who hopes to win Jeffty's money for him. And, finally, Mona, an attractive young homeless woman, keeps showing up until Jeffty realizes that she is his last chance for escape. Despite its grim subject matter, the book is sexy and often outright funny. ("My good luck was LA's a great place to work. Except for the smog and the gang violence, the brushfires in summer, the rain and floods in the winter, it's great.") Ridley injects bits of Eastern mysticism and icy realism to suggest a deeper truth behind Jeffty's tragicomic façade. While it's not a book for the overly sensitive, it is a masterpiece of noir black comedy that recalls Elmore Leonard's best writing. --Patrick O'Kelley
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Customer Reviews
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Read this if you enjoy laughing
Rating  (5)
Date: 2006-04-26
I read this book while I was walking my dog - well listened to it on the unabridged CD version. I'm sure people driving or walking by me often wondered why the crazy woman walking her dog was laughing out loud.
Jeffty is so bad, but so lovable at the same time. He uses his friends, but feels bad about it. He realizes he's a loser, but he has enough hope for the future to keep trying.
The thing about this book is that once you figure out that most of Jeffty's schemes are going to fail, you can just sit back and enjoy the ride. This book will make you laugh, and it might just make you think.
It will definitely make you feel better about your own life, I guarantee.
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Funny and moving noir
Rating (5)
Date: 2004-11-23
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
"Truth: Whenever there are two people sharing space there's somebody trying to pull something on someone else. The plans aren't always big and grand, and the scam isn't always strictly illegal, but everybody's got a racket." -- Love is a Racket
It starts with the sound of broken fingers and lauches into a darkly funny attack on free health care, letting us know immediately that Love is a Racket by John Ridley (the author of Stray Dogs, which was turned into Oliver Stone's U-Turn) is no lighthearted romp.
Ridley quickly shows us that his protagonist Jeffty (the owner of those broken fingers) is a real loser. He can't even seem to sell drugs properly and he drives a GM Corvair. As he tells it, "In L.A., you are what you drive. Me? I'm unsafe at any speed" (citing the famous book by social activist Ralph Nader). When he attends a double feature of films starring Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews (Laura and Where the Sidewalk Ends), he paints himself instantly with a negative brush as he describes his co-patrons. "Losers all," he says, then adds, "I fit in quite cozily."
In the midst of trying to pay back a steadily-increasing debt to Haitian bookie Dumas, our loser -- er ... hero -- gets a visitor that looks like a n easy payday. His friend, Nellis, with whom he shared a life-changing event for both of them -- turns out to be a sure hand at zen poker: he can tell who at a poker table has (or will have) the winning hand; if it's not him, he folds. Jeffty sees in Nellis a way out of his predicament and they head on the road to Vegas.
Most of Love is a Racket consists of Jeffty looking for myriad ways out of this hole he has dug for himself, with Dumas continually getting angrier and using increasingly more violent methods of persuasion. Making him a failed screenwriter was a smart move, because it not only gives him a broken dream to lament, but also makes him instantly sympathetic and makes the articulate prose of this sad sack realistic. Mainstream readers can follow the plot and musings with getting distracted by slang or dialect. It also makes him seem smarter than the average person and his creative methods for getting out of trouble more entertaining.
And Love is a Racket is definitely entertaining. The autobiographical aspects of the book make it fascinating on another level, but it is on its own a satisfying and moving read, especially after the entry of what amounts to a loser's love interest in vagabond Mona. (I learned from Lawrence Block's Grifter's Game to steer clear of women named Mona.) They have a fascinating conversation about Frank Sinatra films, the kind that only happens in fiction (and usually that written by Elmore Leonard). Ridley also shows some of Leonard's skill in his ability to milk humor out of even the most shocking and disturbing events, the likes of which continually seem to happen to Jeffty.
The ending gets a little crazy as Ridley attempts to wrap up several plot points simultaneously within thirty pages, but the majority of Love is a Racket is a remarkable variation on modern noir that fans of the genre (and especially of the new paperback imprint Hard Case Crime) would enjoy.
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The Best description of Broken Fingers ever
Rating  (4)
Date: 2003-12-10
This is a very gritty novel with little hope, but Ridley's writing talent captures you. The writer's ability to describe feelings that most us have had but could never convey to others gives the book a sense of truth that sets it apart.Not for the squeamish, but a very worthwhile read.
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Yeah it's good -- but not that good!
Rating  (3)
Date: 2003-08-13
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
Lot's of 5 star reviews for this book, but I want to disagree some. Yes, there's some very good writing and humor packed into this book. But a lot of it really seemed pointless - like what was the point of having Nellis with his brilliant trick -- only to get blown away? The real plot develops 3/4 into the book, and I'm not sure I even liked the ending. I kept expecting Jeffty to be a better man than he was, and Ridley kept letting me down.
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One of my favorite authors, he has done it again
Rating (5)
Date: 2002-12-29
John Ridley gets better with every book I read. I look forward to his novels with baited breath. I read Stray dogs (it became the movie Uturn, I believe) anyway The book was soo much better than the movie and then Love is a racket blew me away with the action and the things that can happen when you least expect it and then Everyone smokes in hell came out and I liked that even more, if he keeps it up he will be the only author I like enough to buy hardcover! if you like Quentin Tarantino movies you will like John Ridley's books even more. He is one of the best thriller/action fiction writers of his time.
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