Kill Dick

At nineteen, Susie Vogelman should be coasting: she’s an NYU dropout with no responsibilities, endless prescription pills, and a Brentwood estate to waste away in. But Los Angeles has other plans. A string of brutal murders targeting addicts spreads through the city, and Susie’s ivory tower begins to crumble. The headlines point too close to home: her father’s ties to an opioid empire, a sinister secret society, and her own complicity in the systems holding it all together.

Then there’s Peter Holiday, a disgraced professor running a rehab scam so audacious it’s almost admirable. When their lives collide, Susie and Peter are dragged into a web of privilege, corruption, and violence, where every escape leads deeper into the rot.

Dark, satirical, and razor-sharp, Kill Dick is a modern literary thriller that unflinchingly dissects wealth, exploitation, and the perilous line between survival and self-destruction.

ADVANCED PRAISE

“If this book were any better, I’d cut my own head off.”
—Ottessa Moshfegh, author of My Year of Rest and Relaxation

“Luke Goebel’s Kill Dick is a hypnotic descent into wealth, chaos, and the deranged art of self-destruction. It’s like if Joan Didion and Hunter S. Thompson had a love child raised on Oxy and existential dread—impossible to look away from. The prose moves like stolen cash; the world is decadent and rotting at the edges. Honestly, if you’re not reading this book, what are you doing? Probably something dull and unpaid. Consider this your invitation to the party—just don’t expect to leave unscathed.”
—Anna Delvey

“…engrossing, fanatical, full of private grief, and yet charismatic, tender, and intrepid, aglow with more spirit than most Americans have the right to wield.”
―Blake Butler, author of Molly, Alice Knott, There Is No Year, 300,000,000 and Nothing

“Someone I think I can trust.”
— Giancarlo DiTrapano, founder of The New York Tyrant and Tyrant Books

“Kill Dick is a fever dream. Luke Goebel perfectly captures the consciousness of a certain kind of woman—raw, lonely, desperate, and cinematic. Full of grief and longing, it’s got some of the most unforgettable sentences I’ve ever read. This book makes me want to write a crime novel, move to L.A., or maybe just become a killer. Goebel is something else.”
—Harriet Armstrong, author of To Rest Our Minds and Bodies

“Stunning . . . Part noir thriller, part searing social commentary, Kill Dick follows a young artist-turned-addict through the dark, unforgiving, and stratified streets of Los Angeles as she confronts her father’s complicity in the opioid epidemic. In bleak, beautiful prose, Luke Goebel weaves together a narrative that exposes the savage heart of privilege and power, raising questions about truth, memory, and the nature of storytelling itself. With haunting descriptions of a city literally and metaphorically aflame, Kill Dick captures the burning zeitgeist of our time.”
—Kimberly King Parsons

“From Brentwood to Thai Town, West Adams to Skid Row, Luke Goebel’s irresistible Kill Dick draws a deranged—and yet curiously, charmingly relaxed–map of Los Angeles, coming off like a sun-dappled, shaggy cousin of The Shards. Like Eve Babitz before him, he seems to love and understand the city as few do, but Goebel’s eye, his sly, meta-fictive wit, and—above all —his language is entirely his own.”
—Matthew Specktor, founding editor of the Los Angles Review of Books and author of the Folio Prize long-listed memoir-in-criticism: Always Crashing in The Same Car, and The Golden Hour

“For lovers of Bret Easton Ellis, Luke Goebel’s Kill Dick renders a pop-infused and murderous portrait of an iconic Los Angeles on fire, complete with pools, pills, ennui, murders, and a cacophony of brands. But this novel has a timely pulse, and Goebel—with his gorgeous sentences and imagistic prowess—pulls off one of the hardest tricks of all: making morality fun.”
—Melissa Broder, author of Death Valley

“One of the last few geniuses we have left in this life. I mean that. Luke has a lot of pain in his heart.”
―Scott McClanahan, author of Crapalachia and Hill William