Everybody Knows

In this ‘dazzling’ (New York Times Book Review) mystery from an Edgar Award winning author, a fearless black-bag publicist exposes the belly of the L.A. beast.

A New York Times Best Crime Book of the Year •  A NYTBR Editors' Choice Selection • An Anthony Award Nominee • A Barry Award Nominee • An ABA January 2023 Indie Next List Pick •

Recommended by New York Times Book Review • NPR/Fresh Air • Wall Street Journal • Washington Post • LA Times • CrimeReads �� The Boston Globe • South Florida Sun Sentinel • Alta Online • Lit Hub��� Kirkus Reviews• Publishers Weekly• NBC/TODAY and many more!

Welcome to Mae Pruett’s Los Angeles, where ‘Nobody talks. But everybody whispers.’ As a ‘black-bag’ publicist tasked not with letting the good news out but keeping the bad news in, Mae works for one of LA’s most powerful and sought-after crisis PR firms, at the center of a sprawling web of lawyers, PR flaks, and private security firms she calls ‘The Beast.’ They protect the rich and powerful and depraved by any means necessary.   

After her boss is gunned down in front of the Beverly Hills Hotel in a random attack, Mae takes it upon herself to investigate and runs headfirst into The Beast’s lawless machinations and the twisted systems it exists to perpetuate. It takes her on a roving neon joyride through a Los Angeles full of influencers pumped full of pills and fillers; sprawling mansions footsteps away from sprawling homeless encampments; crooked cops and mysterious wrecking crews in the middle of the night.  

Edgar Award-winner Jordan Harper’s Everybody Knows is addicting and alarming, a ‘juggernaut of a novel’ and ‘an absolute tour de force.’ It is what the crime novel can achieve in the modern age: portray the human lives at the center of vast American landscapes, and make us thrill at their attempts to face impossible odds.  

"The book everybody's been waiting for" —Michael Connelly
"An absolute tour de force"—S. A. Cosby
"The best mystery novel I've read in years" —James Patterson


Genre: Mystery

"Searing, timely, sprawling, EVERYBODY KNOWS pulls back Hollywood's velvet curtain, exposing the sordid machinations on which the industry runs and the seamy complicity which keeps it humming. This is L.A. noir at its most incendiary." - Megan Abbott

"With Everybody Knows, Jordan Harper takes on the Beast--the monstrous, corrupt, insatiable mass of organs that eats the losers and feeds the winners in capitalist America, with Hollywood as its base of operations. Our guides to this world (our world) are two of its own dirty players, a celebrity publicist with killer instincts and an ex-cop goon for hire, looking for survival and money and maybe, if it's in the cards, a little bit of redemption. It's a juggernaut of a novel, fast and high-impact, with a sense of doomed humor and bright, sharp teeth." - Steph Cha

"EVERYBODY KNOWS rages through the City of Angels like a broken-dam flood. It's got it all, but most of all it's got deep insight. It's the book everybody's been waiting for." - Michael Connelly

"Just as Ellory mastered the atavistic heart of 1950's corruption, so Jordan Harper has mastered articulating the Day-Glo Technicolor nightmare that is postmodern Los Angeles. Everybody Knows is filled with ballsy movers and shakers, of course, but also plastic social media influencers, high-rent hoods, nihilistic cops, and the sorts of lost souls you'll never forget. Everybody Knows is an absolute tour de force, a trip through an exclusive alluring Hell where everyone gets what they want and just what they deserve." - S A Cosby

"Jordan Harper writes like he's L.A.'s avenging angel. EVERYBODY KNOWS is timely. It's timeless. It's a knockout punch." - James Kestrel

"What a ride! If it were possible for James Ellroy and James M. Cain to produce a bastard love child, it would be EVERYBODY KNOWS by Jordan Harper. Awash in substance abuse, sex and demented violence, this is the LA of a good drug trip turned very bad." - Dennis Lehane

"A bold new reinvention of Los Angeles noir with the Hollywood publicist as sleuth, trawling through social media feeds and manufactured cover stories to discover the hushed-up truth -- where human kindness still flickers alive in a jet-black vision of Tinseltown. Sharply observed, atmospheric, and indelible." - Winnie M Li

"Good lord, this book is fantastic. EVERYBODY KNOWS is one of the best LA noir novels I've ever read. The writing is astonishingly good. It's a wild, honest, sharp, and suspenseful ride, full of wry observations about the nature of power and the cost of being good in a bad, bad world." - Attica Locke

"Everybody Knows is the best mystery novel I've read in years...Jordan Harper writes sentences, and in this case an entire book, that is both terrifying and exhilarating." - James Patterson