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    The Dead Do Not Improve: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Dead Do Not Improve: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Dead Do Not Improve: A Novel
    Audiobook6 hours

    The Dead Do Not Improve: A Novel

    Written by Jay Caspian Kang

    Narrated by Feodor Chin

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Hailed as The Awl's 2012's novel to anticipate, this glorious debut stars hippie detectives, a singular city, and an MFA student on the run.

    On a residential Bay Area block struggling with the collision of gentrifier condos and longtime residents, stymied recent MFA grad Philip Kim is sleeping the night away when bullets fly through a window in his apartment building and end up killing one of his neighbors. Philip only learns about the murder the next day when bored and Googling himself. But when he gets caught up in the investigation and becomes the focus of an elaborate, violent scheme, he will learn far more than he ever wanted to about his former four-eggs-at-a-time borrowing neighbor Dolores Stone, aka "The Grey Beaver," and her shocking connections to an underworld only a city like this one could create.

    Siddhartha "Sid" Finch, a homicide detective bitter about everything except his gorgeous wife, and his phlegmatic, pock-marked partner Jim Kim, land the case. Sid and Jim race after Philip through a menacing, unknowable San Francisco fending off militant surfers, vaguely European cafes, and aggressive Advanced Creative Writing students as they all try to figure out just who's causing trouble in this city they love to hate.

    Exceedingly unique, pulsing with vigor and heart, and loaded with fierce, fresh language, The Dead Do Not Improve confirms Jay Caspian Kang as a true American original as obsessed with surfing and surviving as with the power of unforgettable storytelling.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateAug 7, 2012
    ISBN9780449011218
    Unavailable
    The Dead Do Not Improve: A Novel

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    Reviews for The Dead Do Not Improve

    3/5

    26 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

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    • 3/5
      A very satisfying evocation of San Francisco, but basically I don't know what to make of this. Moments of greatness with many more moments of confusion.
    • 1/5
      I got bored halfway through the audiobook's narration and quit reading. Maybe you will have more luck with it than I did...?
    • 2/5
      In The Dead Do Not Improve, protagonist Philip Kim inhabits the frightening, seedy underworld of San Francisco, one the tourists never see. When his neighbor, who he calls the “child molester” for no good reason, is murdered, and he unwittingly makes eye contact with a member of a notorious street gang, Kim holes up in a shabby hotel. At the same time, police offer Sid Keanu Finch, who is investigating the woman’s murder, encounters troubles of his own. When he goes to interview Miles Hofspaur, an “entrepreneur” in the pornography industry, Finch ends up passing out after ingesting a bee pollen smoothie at the Being Abundance Cafeteria.Author Jay Caspian Kang writes in a cynical, stream of consciousness style that is somewhat reminiscent of Holden Caulfield, especially when main character Philip Kim remembers his drug-enhanced college days on the East Coast in that dreamy way that college often invokes, as he throws in random and sometimes obscure titles of books and movies. But he is definitely writing from a California perspective, even referring to a Virginia – North Carolina Interstate highway as “the” 85, a pure southern California idiom.As he carries the reader along with small bursts of text, Kang reveals Kim’s and Finch’s inner thoughts as they both struggle to discover who has killed an innocent woman, and why Philip Kim is now a target.Written is short bursts of prose that populate the chapters, Kang uses an energy and originality in his writing to paint of picture of people and a city that seem to be just below the surface of reality. (As published in Suspense Magazine)