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  • Published: 15 July 2014
  • ISBN: 9780099592099
  • Imprint: Windmill Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $26.00

Kill Your Friends





A scabrous, darkly humourous satire of the music industry, by a former A&R man.

***Now available to buy: KILL 'EM ALL, the stunning sequel to KILL YOUR FRIENDS***

Meet Steven Stelfox.

London 1997: New Labour is sweeping into power and Britpop is at its zenith. A&R man Stelfox is slashing and burning his way through the music industry, fuelled by greed and inhuman quantities of cocaine, searching for the next hit record amid a relentless orgy of self-gratification.

But as the hits dry up and the industry begins to change, Stelfox must take the notion of cut throat business practices to murderous new levels in a desperate attempt to salvage his career.

  • Published: 15 July 2014
  • ISBN: 9780099592099
  • Imprint: Windmill Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 336
  • RRP: $26.00

About the author

John Niven

John Niven was born in Irvine, Ayrshire. He is the author of ten novels and has written for a wide range of publications, including a weekly column for the Scottish Sunday Mail. He lives in Buckinghamshire.

Also by John Niven

See all

Praise for Kill Your Friends

Brilliant. It made me ill with laughter. The filthiest, blackest, most shocking, most hilarious debut novel I've read in years

India Knight

Magnificently eloquent...A vicious, black-hearted howl of a book... Cripplingly funny

The Times

A rollicking tale of record company excess...Hysterical...Niven worked in the UK music industry for 10 years and his insider knowledge pays off...This is truly an account of a lost era, a brilliant description of the last decadent blow-out.

Independent on Sunday

Might well be the best British novel since Trainspotting

Word Magazine

The fickle music industry is ripe for satire and here former record-label man Niven creates a compelling and hilarious portrait.

Shortlist

Dark, twisted...and also laugh-out-loud funny

TNT Magazine

An all-out assault, a withering, scabrous attack on every part of the filthy machine... Stelfox is a creation of unparalleled awfulness, chronically sexist, racist and everything else-ist. He is funny, too... You laugh though you know you shouldn't

Independent

Niven's insider knowledge, coupled with the kind of headlong, febrile prose that would have Hunter S. Thompson happily emptying both barrels into the sky, results in a novel that is cripplingly funny

The Times

Wonderfully nasty...Extraordinarily vicious, deeply cynical and thoroughly depraved, but it's also bed-wettingly funny... American Psycho meets Spinal Tap... except more evil, more shocking and much, much funnier

Scotsman

Everyone knows someone with an encyclopaedic knowledge of pop or Radio One’s back catalogue. So if you’re fed up of second-guessing which albums are missing from their collection, but want a more personal gift than just another iTunes voucher, try John Niven’s satirical look at the music industry. Recently adapted for film, this is a hard and fast story based within the cutthroat music industry. Give this book as a gift and you’re sure to have any muso singing your praises.

Marie Claire