"Howard Paar has single handedly created the punk L.A. crime novel and crammed it with vérité scenes at 1980s clubs, Hollywood backstreets, and real characters with nods to The Specials,The Clash, The Psychedelic Furs, Iggy Pop, The Canterbury, The Nickodell, The Zero Zero Club, Darby Crash, and dozens of others. As founder of America's first ska venue The O.N. Klub in Los Angeles's Silverlake neighborhood, Paar has the musical and literary chops and personal experience to bring this world alive in this pacey joyous thriller."
―Denise Hamilton, Edgar finalist, former Los Angeles Times reporter, author of seven crime novels set in her hometown, editor of Los Angeles Noir, Los Angeles Noir 2: The Classics, and Speculative Los Angeles
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“You know how sometimes you walk into a club at one in the morning, expecting nothing but a cold drink, and a band that wasn't even on the marquee comes on and pins you to the wall? And you think, all the wasted nights were worth it, if they led to this place, right now? That's the power and eloquence of Howard Paar's TOP RANKIN'. Deeply informed, deeply felt, it's the story of a time (punk -> ska) and a place (Los Angeles); but far more, it's the story of flawed, fractured humans, trying to be better than themselves, and on a good night, getting there. Paar knows the scene like no one else, which would be sufficient; but what puts TOP RANKIN' hands and shoulders and head and feet above the pack is that he writes like a slumming angel.”
―Howard A. Rodman, author of The Great Eastern
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“Not many novels are able to capture the knocked-out essence of the music scene in Los Angeles 40 years ago, but Howard Paar’s searing second book does all that and so much more. Set as the ’80s are just getting started, the switchblade setting of a new nightclub, dedicated to ska no less, in the slightly-seedy environs of Silverlake then is enough to make the reader lock their doors and windows. And that it’s all based on Paar’s real-life past as the owner of the ON Klub makes it all the more eerie. Lead character James Dual has jumped in way over his head, and all around Hollywood and beyond things are starting to catch up to him. Drugs, murder, record company chicanery, overdoses, the LAPD: once this lively broiler gets started there is no turning back. In a world once ruled by writers Elmore Leonard, Robert B. Parker and others, Paar has established himself now as one of those to beat. The way he weaves the streets of Los Angeles into a colliding series of near-misses and dead-on collisions feels like it’s a high-speed run at the future, just as it’s getting started. Howard Paar’s uncanny ability to put his characters in the line of fire but also be blessed with an ability to keep going captures what the early 1980s really were: one of the luckiest eras of them all. Pretty soon the debts were getting called in and the music business had figured out that if they were really going to hit the jackpot they would have to boil the fun out of the game and get rid of some of the guessing. But this book gloriously captures what the craziness was about then. It’s all captured in TOP RANKIN’ and in a way that won’t soon be forgotten. Turn it up.”
―Bentleys Bandstand - Review in Americana Highways. Bill is author of Smithsonian Rock & Roll: Live and Unseen and was music editor at the Austin Sun and LA Weekly
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"A must-read for anyone who wants to learn more about the early punk/ska scene in Los Angeles, all viewed through a noir lens."
―Francesca Lia Block, award-winning author of Dangerous Angels: The Weetzie Bat books
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“It’s great fun, with an irresistible moment in L.A. captured by someone who lived it.”
―Steve Erickson
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Media
Alan McGee's Creation Dream Machine, Episode 9 - ‘Howard Paar / On Location O.N. KLUB’
Howard on ‘Ska Boom - An American Ska & Reggae Podcast’ with Marc Wasserman
Interview on Volume West (Sirius) with Lyndsey Parker and Davey Havok
CrimeReads - “On Klub Founder Howard Paar on Writing a Mem-Noir Based on the Iconic Venue”
Interview on Salt Lake Dirt Podcast with Kyler Bingham
Guest appearance on Yesterday's News (NTS Radio) with Lorraine Petel
The Synopsis
It's the dawn of 1980 in Los Angeles and everything’s changing.
Punks, dopers and assorted miscreants play in the decaying homes of Hollywood golden era stars. The playfully decadent, diverse LA punk scene is under threat from the violent, misogynistic hardcore scene not to mention the suddenly cheap, high grade heroin that's tempting many who haven’t managed to get their artistic careers in gear yet.
James Dual wants no part of that and inspired by the racially integrated punky ska revival in England starts the ON Klub, a ska, soul, and reggae club at the rough and ready pre-gentrified Silver Lake end of Sunset Blvd. He and partner in crime, actor spawn Drea Dresden, try their best to make the transition out of the 70’s in one piece.
As the hole in the hillside dump of a joint successfully explodes there's no fighting on the ON Klub dance floor shared by young Jamaicans, sharp-dressed Asian American girls, South Central kids, London escapees, mods on scooters from Orange County, Latino kids from the neighborhood―all united by the inspiring vinyl they can’t hear on the radio or anywhere else in the US. This is they only place these kids can go where everyone’s welcome and they are treated equally so it becomes home to them.
All this attention, not to mention over capacity crowds and under age kids leads to a visit from the soon to be notorious Rampart police division who threaten closure and worse. A journalist friend brings a mob related music man connected to Bob Marley to visit the club, who becomes obsessed with the charismatic young Jamaican singer Loraine Sulley, who is performing that night. He lures James with promises to bring in iconic ska and reggae artists to perform at the club if James convinces Loraine to sign to Marshall’s planned new record label. In the meantime, James and Drea are threatened by two corrupt Sheriff’s homicide detectives who are still trying to nail an innocent James for the death of a band that occurred soon after he first arrived in LA.
James arranges to have Drea hide out in London until things cool down. While there she meets controversial new English band Vortex and subsequently joins them for their first US tour where they warn what things could get like if the unthinkable happens and washed up B movie star, US Republican Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan is elected.
Capturing the spirit of LA in 1980, Top Rankin' is populated with real-life characters from the music world in Los Angeles, New York, and London, and leads readers on a tour of the dangers and importance of providing refuge on the precipice of major political upheaval.
Order the novel
Book Soup: https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781644281932
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Top-Rankin-Punk-Noir-Novel/dp/1644281937
Soundtrack To The Novel
Don Taylor (Bob Marley's manager), Joe Strummer (The Clash), Sylvia Robinson (Sugar Hill Records creator)
