For three generations Fairchild's family has owned miles of coastal Northern California, a region to whose grandness, he believes, the best people are drawn.But it's also a land of interminable rains, puzzling droughts, and cloying fog-banks. And some of its fine people have become, in Fairchild's eyes, "isolated minds bending around tightly to feed on themselves." These are his people - the burnouts and mystics, the bikers and surfers, the witches and warlocks.Into this world comes Carl Van Ness, a man bent on suicide who thinks of himself as "already dead," drifting along the coast until he finds this strange community waiting for him. Then he collides with Nelson Fairchild.The pacts Fairchild makes - first with criminal associates, later with the would-be suicide, finally with a demon - all have to be paid for. The lengths to which he's willing to go ultimately become the depths to which he must sink before he's ready to confront himself. And his journey leads readers into the labyrinth of Northern California's demimonde. From Booklist Johnson's northern California is a gothic land peopled by the emotionally damaged, the walking wounded, veterans of wars and drugs and drug deals gone bad; it is a coast inhabited by real spirits and lost souls, madmen and hitmen. With his noir premise--a pot grower hires a drifter to murder his wife--poet and novelist Johnson weaves an intricate tale of the intertwined lives of more than a dozen denizens of Mendocino County, California. Shifting perspectives and jumps in chronology contribute to a hallucinatory narrative that parallels the borderline psychoses of a majority of the book's characters. Johnson's strengths lie in his lyrical descriptions of the Pacific Coast and the surprising depth he evokes in his character development. Nelson Fairchild Jr., whose first-person narration is the centerpiece ofAlready Dead, is a Nietzche-quoting paranoid, a grower of marijuana whoreally is being hounded by a couple of hired guns. Fairchild enlists the assistance of his partner, Clarence, for protection, while Navarro, a displaced cop, finds himself caught up in the insanity brought on by Fairchild's misdeeds. Throughout, the omnipresent scent of violence grows more and more pungent. Reminiscent of the work of Robert Stone and Jim Harrison.Benjamin Segedin Review ... [a] mesmerizingly hazy journey through evil.... Johnson is a crafty writer, alternating between internal monologues and omniscient third-person narratives. His characters cross-pollinate the novel with human emotions and inclinations, from the mystical to the criminal, the addictive to the predictive. And time itself is a toy, shifting back and forth yet woven like a string of crochet knots.... Ultimately, Johnson brings a poet's eye and style to the novel.... --Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, Scott Martelle... once Johnson gets his hooks into you--it takes about two sentences--it's not so easy to maintain your bemusement, and pretty much impossible to stop reading, severely as he can try your patience ... A novel whose ending encrypts its own mixed-but-overall-favorable review--how could you not love it? --The New York Times Book Review, David Gates From the Publisher A contemporarynoir, Already Dead is the tangled story of Nelson Fairchild Jr., disenfranchised scion to a northern California land fortune. A relentless failure, Nelson has botched nearly every scheme he's attempted to pull off. Now his future lies in a potentially profitable marijuana patch hidden in the lush old-growth redwoods on the family land.Nelson has some serious problems. His marriage has fallen apart, and he may lose his land, cash and crop in the divorce. What's more, in need of some quick cash, he had foolishly agreed to smuggle $90,000 worth of cocaine through customs for Harry Lally, a major player in a drug syndicate. Chickening out just before bringing the drugs through, he