I Fear LA

Susie Vogelman is young, beautiful, loaded, and completely and hopelessly addicted to OxyContin. After her roommate overdoses on prescription drugs and dies, Susie drops out of NYU. We meet her as she’s living in the sprawling Los Angeles mansion that belongs to her father — corporate counsel to the Sickler family, a thinly veiled stand-in for the Sacklers, of Purdue Pharma fame. While our protagonist Susie is dealing with the early stages of her own opioid addiction, the city of Los Angeles is dealing with a string of horrific murders, referred to simply as “the killings,” which are targeting opioid addicts, largely living on the streets. The murderer — or murderers, as the case may be — is killing addicts and mutilating their corpses beyond recognition: beheading them, cutting their bodies in half, affixing their nipples to their eyelids. The killings proceed in the background of Susie’s story, terrorizing the most abject corners of the city as this sordid tale of wealth, addiction, and corruption unfolds in the fore.