Screwdriver

<p>Ian Bloom wrote <em>Screwdriver</em> at age 23 between the Hamptons and the Lower East Side - drug-fueled paradise shotgun-loaded with whiskey skateboarding gargantuan canvas painting and acting school - while politely passing on a white-shoe banking desk and the slow death that comes with it. He finished the novel in Los Angeles carving a path to Hollywood. <em>Screwdriver</em> is a massively flammable <em>Big Lebowski</em> × <em>American Psycho </em>× <em>Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas </em>spectacle-an engine of speed leverage and vice-bursting through the maelstrom of Hollywood Wall Street and the Art World.</p><p></p><p>At the center is Jean Barry - a beautiful wreck with perfect manners - an art dealer-fixer turned who moves through Los Angeles like a loaded weapon: cigarettes convertibles backroom meetings and black-bag favors. When a single job goes sideways Jean is pulled into a labyrinth where deal-flow becomes seduction sex becomes leverage and every room has a watcher - studios hedge-fund heirs dealers escorts gamblers and the dead-eyed operatives who keep the machine quiet. <em>Screwdriver</em> plays like a noir carnival under floodlights: a chase through money image and appetite where the only rule is momentum - and the cost of staying alive is learning what to trade.</p>