"A brilliant homage to everyone's favorite super-spy, and a hilarious, action-packed, made-for-the-movies thriller about a man suavely dancing along both sides of the thin line between heroism and madness." -Matt Forbeck, New York Times bestselling author of Halo: New Blood
"Pacey and unrepentant fun, Haris Orkin's You Only Live Once takes the James Bond mythos, gives it a swift kick in the backside and steals its wallet." -James Swallow, New York Times bestselling author of Nomad
"Orkin skillfully manages to create a story that is genuinely amusing, tenderly moving, and decidedly thoughtful. A manically funny farce both delightfully absurd and strangely plausible." -Kirkus Reviews
"Fill shaker with ice. Add equal parts Ian Fleming and Quentin Tarantino. Shake (do not stir). Garnish with Douglas Adams, and you get You Only Live Once, a delicious martini as dry as the dusty California desert." -Dan Jolley, USA Today bestselling author of the Gray Widow Trilogy
"A sexy, slapstick, razzle-dazzle, rock'em-sock'em re-imagining of Don Quixote as James Bond emerging from deep cover in a mental hospital to save the world." -Charles Harper Webb, award-winning author of Side Bend World
"You Only Live Once is an outstanding blend of action and fun designed to keep readers engaged and guessing to the end." -Midwest Book Review
"You Only Live Once makes for an engrossing read offering many satisfying twists and turns. Fans of thrillers will be delighted by the various nuances Haris Orkin brings to the table as he introduces a quasi-hero who ultimately faces success despite himself. A healthy dose of humor and irony is added to create a story about a misfit in search of a mission." -D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review
"Orkin's twist on the spy narrative is fast-paced and exciting, packed with thrilling action sequences and close calls." -Booklife, by Publisher's Weekly
"An intelligent parody with sharp, witty writing. A rip-roaring tale of daring do." -Reader's Favorite Silver Award Winner
2018-04-23
A psychiatric patient who believes he's a British spy escapes from a mental institution and finds himself embroiled in real intrigue in this debut comedy. James Flynn grew up in California and was orphaned when he was 10 years old, shuffled from one foster home to another. But as an adult, he's convinced he works for the British Secret Service and that his home, the City of Roses Psychiatric Institute, is his agency's headquarters. He speaks in a British accent, walks the halls in swanky suits, and habitually seduces fawning female nurses. When the institute is taken over by a new administration, headed by the insufferable Dr. Grossfarber, James escapes, confident that the Secret Service has been compromised by adversaries. He finds Sancho, a 22-year-old orderly at City of Roses, and drags him into the search for Dulcie Delgadillo, a beautiful, young drug addict released from the institute, who James believes has been kidnapped. Once at her apartment, he finds a loaded revolver and a duffel bag crammed with cash, which belong to Dulcie's abusive boyfriend, Mike Croker, a motorcycle gang member involved in drug dealing. James uses the money to outfit himself in an Armani suit, buys an Aston Martin, and is pursued both by drug dealers intent on retrieving their stolen cash and the police looking to return him to the institute. James then stumbles on a major crime boss's plot to kidnap the world's 10 richest people in an attempt to profit from the global stock market collapse that he believes will ensue. Orkin pays comedic homage to Cervantes' Don Quixote, the obvious fictional inspiration for James' flights of deluded fantasy. But unlike that work's treatment of Quixote's hallucinations, it remains tantalizingly unclear if James is sane or not—he's uncannily talented at being an action hero for someone theatrically posing as one. This is really a novella, at under 160 pages, and the plot moves at breakneck speed. The author's prose is so buoyant that it borders on gleeful, with James dispensing words of wisdom to Sancho ("A man is like a teabag….You never know how strong he is until you dip him in hot water"). Orkin skillfully manages to create a story that is genuinely amusing, tenderly moving, and decidedly thoughtful. A manically funny farce both delightfully absurd and strangely plausible.
