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P & R
Paperback
Mystery & ThrillerLiterary Fiction
Publisher: Seagull Editions
Published: Oct 6 2025
Pages: 226
Weight: 0.50
Height: 0.52 Width: 5.00 Depth: 8.00
Language: English
For Peter Peppard and Ronald Ragvald, two screenwriters on the ragged edge of sanity, life in the Hollywood Hills is a delicate balance of cynicism, cheap whiskey, and a friendship forged over two decades of shared contempt for the industry that pays their bills. Peppard is a hyperactive pulp novelist who never sleeps; Ragvald is a zen-mechanic and language genius who would rather be rebuilding a vintage motorcycle than fixing another terrible script. They are outsiders in a town built on artifice, happily allergic to the trends, phonies, and vapid executives that surround them.
Their chaotic but stable existence is shattered when the studio decides Peppard's gritty L.A. noir masterpiece needs a small tweak: it's now set in Nebraska. As Peppard wages a one-man war against the soul-crushing machinery of Hollywood, their home is invaded by an unexpected refugee from a new-age wellness cult, forcing the two friends to become the one thing they've only ever written about: private investigators.
Thrust into a real-life conspiracy of missing gurus and sun-bleached secrets, Peppard and Ragvald must navigate a two-front war-one against the soulless executives trying to ruin Peppard's story, and another against a charismatic con man who has destroyed a life. In a city of beautiful lies, can two cynical burnouts find a single, ugly truth worth fighting for?
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