More Than They Could Chew

More Than They Could Chew, Rob Roberge Nick Ray lives in a world where everything is for sale. University Ph.D.s, pig fetuses, bomb shelters, and vending-machine-dispensed live bait, to name just a few. But for the first time in a long time, Nick Ray finally has something to sell.

Determined to be covert about an affair he's having with a woman already spoken for (by another woman), Nick buys the cheapest computer he can find at a local pawn shop, only to discover that the hard drive contains the names and addresses of dozens of members of the Witness Protection Program.

Partnering with a hulking Russian gangster with the world's worst fashion sense and a disbarred lawyer who drinks rocket fuel, Nick decides to take advantage of his unique discovery. Yet despite the impressive credentials of this entrepreneurial dream team, Nick soon learns that having something to sell can end up simply making you a valuable commodity to someone else wanting to make a big score...

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On Tour

September 11, 2005
Come hear Rob speak about writing UCLA Extension’s 2005 Writers Faire.

October 2, 2005
Music & writing panel, and three book signings.


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Reviews

Roberge stages even the most brutal scenes for nervous laughs, and he has a knack for impeccably grotty details of the demimonde: one of Nick's companions is a disbarred lawyer known as Maggot Arm Joe, thanks to his unorthodox treatment for an IV-drug abscess.

-- New York Times

If you're like us, you'll love "More Than They Could Chew." For Long Beachers, the twisted, yet (or, therefore) enjoyably speedy buddy caper is made even more of a joy to read by the fact that the bulk of the action occurs in Long Beach using, for the most part, real locations, or sites just semi-tweaked by Roberge.

 

-- Long Beach Press Telegram

Ray, a former film editor fallen into drunken dissolution, is the darkly hilarious narrator of the Long Beach author’s second novel, “More Than They Could Chew.” Between benders, he works the desk of a ramshackle rattrap on the corner of Long Beach Boulevard and Broadway called the Lincoln Hotel.

 

-- Special to the Press Telegram

Extremely fast moving and often funny and sad at the same time, this book is so plausible that it feels like something I saw on the news not read in a book. 

 

-- Crime Spree Magazine

Roberge's book is not easy to shake off, that's for sure. The grime of these lives still remains in our minds long after the last page has been read.

 

-- VALLEY SCENE Magazine

Holy God! Strap in and get ready for a mind flush. Roberge gives us the rotting tail of the counterculture in postmodern apocalypse. Kesey and Burroughs meet Leonard Palahniuk -- and get stomped. I need a fix. More, now!

-- Tim Dorsey

Gritty, funky, addictive, and written with eloquent ruthlessness, as all the good ones are.

-- Kinky Friedman

"More Than They Could Chew is sick and funny and impossible to put down. Roberge marches us into his grimy world of tragic losers and he keeps us there, eyes wide open, with his perverse humor and twisted wit. Once these people get a hold of you, there's no turning back."

-- Katie Arnoldi, author of Chemical Pink

"There are only a few great practitioners of noir working today -- Scott Phillips, Daniel Woodrell, Victor Gischler -- but you can add Rob Roberge to their ranks. More Than They Could Chew is as bitterly violent and bitterly funny as they come and Roberge is a breath of dirty fresh air."

-- Tod Goldberg, author of Fake, Liar, Cheat & Living Dead Girl.

"Call it kink-noir. Call it beer-soaked black humor. Call it whatever you want. But buy this book."

-- Rachel Resnick, author of Go West,
Young F*cked up Chick