Book description
When Simon Johnson is attacked in his crummy LA apartment, he knows he
must defend himself or die. Turning on the lights after the scuffle,
Simon realises two things: one, he has killed his attacker; two, the
resemblance of the man to himself is uncanny.
Over the coming days, Simon’s lonely life will spiral out of control.
With his pet goldfish Francine in tow, he embarks on a gripping
existential investigation, into his own murky past, and that of Jeremy
Shackleford, the (apparently) happily married math teacher whose body is
now lying in Simon’s bathtub under forty gallons of ice.
But Simon has a plan. Gradually, he begins to assume the dead man’s
identity, fooling Shackleford’s colleagues, and even his beautiful wife.
However, when mysterious messages appear on the walls around Simon’s
apartment, he realises that losing his old self will be more difficult
than he’d imagined. Everything points to a long forgotten date the
previous spring, when his life and Shackleford’s first collided. As the
contradictions mount, and the ice begins to melt, the events of the past
year will resolve themselves in the most catastrophic way.
Combining gritty noir, psychological drama and dazzling plotting,
Low Life
is a shocking novel that announces Jahn as a brilliant new voice of
modern America. Ryan David Jahn grew up in Arizona, Texas and
California. He left school at sixteen to work in a record store and
subsequently joined the army. Since 2004 he has worked in television and
film. He currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife Mary.
