The Big Drop: Homecoming

by Ryan Gattis

After killing a yakuza in self-defense, an ex-military translator owes a debt that is payable only one way: take the dead man’s place searching for a missing woman in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles.

. . .

After killing a yakuza in self-defense, an ex-military translator owes a debt that is payable only one way: take the dead man’s place searching for a missing woman in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles. Fusing gritty yakuza action with elements of classic noir in the city that started it all, the novel smashes Johnny Ban into a rarely explored corner of Los Angeles, sending him in search of two distinct parts of his past: his long-buried Americanness, and his first love—a Japanese woman up to her neck in trouble.

102 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Ryan Gattis is the author of Safe, Kung Fu High School, The System (July 2020), The Big Drop novellas (Homecoming & Impermanence) and All Involved, which won the Alex Award from the American Library Association and the Lire Award for Noir of the Year in France. He lives and writes in South Los Angeles, where he is a member of art collective UGLARworks, a founding board member of arts non-profit Heritage Future, and a PEN America Prison Writing Mentor.

For UK readers, Advanced Reading Copies of The System are now available. Please visit Netgalley UK to request one.

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Reviews

[Eric]

This is the kind of noir novella I would love to write one day. Ill-fated and complex characters, all the right noir tropes, and a quick and engaging pace.

[Paul]

Perhaps I'm being a bit generous with the four stars, this book strikes me as the work of a writer used to working with graphic novels and other illustrated genres trying to transition to straight literature. He's discovering his competence at plotting and metaphor, facilities that would respectively blossom and disappear in his first full-length work, "All Involved." He also conjures a pretty decent pulp atmosphere with a nifty trans-Pacific twist, so that's entertaining.

[Adan]

Amazing. Raymond Chandler reborn, but with a harder edge.