What do you think?
Rate this book
Jack Liffey #3
The Poison Sky
Jack Liffey is at the end of his rope when he's hired to find a teen. The cruel streets of Los Angeles are no place for naïve, young Jimmy Mardesich, and his mother wants him home. But it turns out that Jimmy is far from living on the streets....
He’s living in Paradise.
At least, that's what his new friends are saying. They've shown the true path to inner peace -- and they'll fight to keep him. But then their paths all cross with the real doom merchants. It’s a sinister secret that Jack alone must uncover -- a secret with the potential to wipe out much of the city....
He’s living in Paradise.
At least, that's what his new friends are saying. They've shown the true path to inner peace -- and they'll fight to keep him. But then their paths all cross with the real doom merchants. It’s a sinister secret that Jack alone must uncover -- a secret with the potential to wipe out much of the city....
241 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
About the author
John Shannon
80 books17 followersJohn Shannon is a contemporary American author, lately of detective fiction. He began his career with four well-reviewed novels in the 1970s and 1980s, then in 1996 launched the Jack Liffey mystery series. He cites as his literary influences Raymond Chandler, Graham Greene, Robert Stone and Jim Harrison.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
September 29, 2025
Although many private detective series have been set in L.A., Jack’s Liffey’s Los Angeles has a surreal and dystopian character all its own. The Hollywood tinsel-town dream is long gone, and everything is falling apart. Decay has weakened both the infrastructure and morale of the sprawling city. Flash floods, earthquakes, wildfires, and toxic spills have transformed the metropolis into a vast danger zone. Everywhere nature is in revolt against the greedy developers and reckless industrialists who have abused it. Catastrophe has been normalized, and hysteria is commonplace. Topical social and environmental issues are woven into the Jack Liffey plots, as in the pro-feminist V.I. Warshawski detective series by Sara Paretsky.
Yet Jack is a postmodern intellectual who refuses to assign any meaning to disorder and breakdown. In his mind, explanations about collapse amount only to false consciousness – the self-deceptive effort to explain an incoherent and directionless reality. Instead of searching for reasons, Jack concludes there are none. He works as an unlicensed private detective, taking cases involving lost kids. He barely scrapes by. He has few expectations and aims only to be ready for what comes next.
In the third Jack Liffey novel The Poison Sky (2000), one of the best in the series, Jack is hired by Faye Mardesich, a disillusioned and unsatisfied wife, to find her 17-year-old son Jimmy. He is missing and believed to have joined a secretive Southern California religious cult. Jack learns that the last several years have been hard on the Mardesich family. When Faye’s middle-aged husband Milo lost his engineering job in the aerospace industry, he turned to the bottle (similar to Jack’s own downward spiral after being laid off as a technical writer at Rockwell aircraft).
But a year ago Milo straightened up and took the only job he could find, as a low-paid night security guard at GreenWorld Chemical. This is a plant that neutralizes (or “reclaims”) industrial waste. Or does it? As an under-employed engineer, Milo knows enough chemistry to be suspicious. He has tailed GreenWorld’s tanker trucks into the high desert late at night to observe their furtive activities. Meanwhile, Jack has been assaulted by thugs who invade his tiny condo. The Jimmy/Milo plots come together when Jack realizes he is being targeted not by goons from the paranoid religious cult but from the chemical plant.
The fractured Mardesich family finally realizes it has a common enemy in GreenWorld, and Jack becomes an ally in a dangerous struggle to uncover the truth (and bring the family back together). The narrative draws towards an apocalyptic conclusion in which L.A. is threatened by catastrophe. Can stoic Jack become an action hero?
The Jack Liffey neo-noir novels are well written, intellectually bracing, and politically aware. They really should be better known in the world of detective fiction. The Unnamed Press has brought back a half-dozen of them into print (including The Poison Sky). Beginning with The Concrete River (1996), these books prove that the hardboiled P.I. with courage, a sharp mind, and a strong sense of humanity is far from extinct.
Yet Jack is a postmodern intellectual who refuses to assign any meaning to disorder and breakdown. In his mind, explanations about collapse amount only to false consciousness – the self-deceptive effort to explain an incoherent and directionless reality. Instead of searching for reasons, Jack concludes there are none. He works as an unlicensed private detective, taking cases involving lost kids. He barely scrapes by. He has few expectations and aims only to be ready for what comes next.
In the third Jack Liffey novel The Poison Sky (2000), one of the best in the series, Jack is hired by Faye Mardesich, a disillusioned and unsatisfied wife, to find her 17-year-old son Jimmy. He is missing and believed to have joined a secretive Southern California religious cult. Jack learns that the last several years have been hard on the Mardesich family. When Faye’s middle-aged husband Milo lost his engineering job in the aerospace industry, he turned to the bottle (similar to Jack’s own downward spiral after being laid off as a technical writer at Rockwell aircraft).
But a year ago Milo straightened up and took the only job he could find, as a low-paid night security guard at GreenWorld Chemical. This is a plant that neutralizes (or “reclaims”) industrial waste. Or does it? As an under-employed engineer, Milo knows enough chemistry to be suspicious. He has tailed GreenWorld’s tanker trucks into the high desert late at night to observe their furtive activities. Meanwhile, Jack has been assaulted by thugs who invade his tiny condo. The Jimmy/Milo plots come together when Jack realizes he is being targeted not by goons from the paranoid religious cult but from the chemical plant.
The fractured Mardesich family finally realizes it has a common enemy in GreenWorld, and Jack becomes an ally in a dangerous struggle to uncover the truth (and bring the family back together). The narrative draws towards an apocalyptic conclusion in which L.A. is threatened by catastrophe. Can stoic Jack become an action hero?
The Jack Liffey neo-noir novels are well written, intellectually bracing, and politically aware. They really should be better known in the world of detective fiction. The Unnamed Press has brought back a half-dozen of them into print (including The Poison Sky). Beginning with The Concrete River (1996), these books prove that the hardboiled P.I. with courage, a sharp mind, and a strong sense of humanity is far from extinct.
September 11, 2023
Utterly California, this dude captures the things that make LA, LA. Meanwhile weaving a great missing kids detective story.
October 22, 2012
It is my third John Shannon's book, and I still have several to go. "The Poison Sky" is a strange mystery. From a quiet, Ross Macdonald-style (albeit set in the age of Internet) mystery, it morphs into a cinematic disaster thriller.
The characters are somewhat believable and there is less pop psychology than in the same author's "City of Strangers" and dialogues are not as cheaply philosophical and contrived as in Mr. Shannon's "The Concrete River". However, Jack Liffey is still too good to be quite believable. Lew Archer, despite all his greatness, was more human.
However Mr. Shannon has an obsession of sprinkling scenes of L.A. weirdness all over his novels. "The Poison Sky" has more such scenes than the two previous books I read combined. I am afraid that the trend may continue, and I still have 7 of his books to read. Sure, L.A. is weird, just not that weird. Most people in L.A. are still obsessed with the same thing as people in all other cities in the world - making money and acquiring power in whatever form they can.
The biting descriptions of various religious and para-religious cults are sharp and funny. Writing is economical. The book is beautifully short. The main problem is that what started as a four-star book ended as a one-and-a-half-star one.
Two and three quarter stars.
The characters are somewhat believable and there is less pop psychology than in the same author's "City of Strangers" and dialogues are not as cheaply philosophical and contrived as in Mr. Shannon's "The Concrete River". However, Jack Liffey is still too good to be quite believable. Lew Archer, despite all his greatness, was more human.
However Mr. Shannon has an obsession of sprinkling scenes of L.A. weirdness all over his novels. "The Poison Sky" has more such scenes than the two previous books I read combined. I am afraid that the trend may continue, and I still have 7 of his books to read. Sure, L.A. is weird, just not that weird. Most people in L.A. are still obsessed with the same thing as people in all other cities in the world - making money and acquiring power in whatever form they can.
The biting descriptions of various religious and para-religious cults are sharp and funny. Writing is economical. The book is beautifully short. The main problem is that what started as a four-star book ended as a one-and-a-half-star one.
Two and three quarter stars.
July 29, 2015
I really enjoyed the character of Jack Liffey. He has a quiet, sarcastic sense of humor and I also liked to see the California of yesteryear through his eyes. The story was hard to put down, and it kept you wanting to know more. I didn't feel like I learned anything reading this book, but just enjoyed a good story. I will be buying more John Shannon books!
February 4, 2017
Ah, the smog of LA....
Good enough story that was about hard to follow at times and sometimes didn't even make sense, to me at least. Would recommend if you want something without much character development or a intriguing storyline.
Good enough story that was about hard to follow at times and sometimes didn't even make sense, to me at least. Would recommend if you want something without much character development or a intriguing storyline.
April 22, 2016
I like jack
Very fast moving book, easy reading, feel like you know the characters, got so involved you want a good ending
Very fast moving book, easy reading, feel like you know the characters, got so involved you want a good ending
July 21, 2011
I like these Jack Liffey detective stories...unique insight to life in LA.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews