The Delivery Man — Joe McGinniss

“A gripping literary thriller and an auspicious debut” set against the surreal excess of Las Vegas from the author of Carousel Court (George Pelecanos, author and award-winning writer/producer of The Wire).
 
After attending college in New York, Chase returns to Vegas and is drawn into the lucrative but dangerous world of a teenage call-girl service with his childhood friend Michele, a beautiful Salvadoran immigrant with whom he shares a tragic past. Over the course of one extraordinary summer, they will confront the violence and emptiness at the heart of the city and their generation.
 
At once stark and electrically atmospheric, horrifying and hopeful, The Delivery Man is an ambitious literary novel as well as a fast and absorbing page-turner -- and a powerful indictment of a society in which personal responsibility has been abandoned, lust is increasingly mistaken for love, and innocence is an anachronism.
 
“A dead-of-night story surehandedly told in a pared-down, teeth-bared style reminiscent of Joan Didion.” -- Janet Fitch, New York Times�"bestselling author of White Oleander
 
“[A] brisk, bleak debut novel . . . offers unflinching glimpses at mores in free fall . . . searing . . . memorable . . . not for the faint of heart.” -- The New York Times Book Review
 
“McGinniss offers a fresh take on the seamy side of Vegas by focusing on the wasted lives of burned-out teens hooked on drugs and money.” -- USA Today
 
“It's sex, drugs, and a slew of lost souls . . . engrossing . . . Could The Delivery Man be this decade's Less Than Zero?” -- Marie Claire
 
“Grim, convincing, and compelling . . . The Delivery Man really delivers.” -- The Washington Post