Penzler/Mysterious Press
Published July 22, 2025
Reviewed by Mary-Jane Oltarzewski
Behind Sunset is an action-packed crime novel, but most of the action takes place at the expense of its central character, who is repeatedly buffeted, battered and beaten by people and forces that are beyond his control, under circumstances that are often hilarious. Set in the last decade of the 20th century, it follows the adventures of Elliot Gross, a graduate of an elite East Coast college who had been naïve enough to think that he could move to LA and live the good life as a successful screenwriter. Instead, he’s living in a (barely) converted garage, barely making a dent in his massive student loans by writing for a well-known smut magazine called Raunchy. The magazine (this is 1994, remember, when internet porn had not yet replaced the print genre) is owned and operated by Victor Kingman, the notorious self-made multimillionaire, vulgarian libertarian and free-speech advocate, who is not averse to dabbling in blackmail. Although the Raunchy gig pays poorly, it is “by far the best-paying job that [Elliot] had ever held and the one that made the best use of the master’s in English and Comp. Literature.” Elliot has learned, unfortunately, that the wages of sin “were, as it turned out, disappointingly low.” Worse yet, his boss likes him – so much so that he rewards his young protégé with a black satin team jacket that features the magazine’s logo emblazoned in bright pink on the back, and saddles him with the plum assignment of taking home a box full of inflatable sex dolls, with orders to try them all out, rate them, and write a 2500-word review in time for the special Valentines issue. It’s little wonder that the novel begins “Pornography was making Elliot sad.”
St. Martin’s Paperbacks
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