Baked: A Novel
Mark Haskell SmithMiro Basinas is an experimental botanist who sells his rarefied product to a discerning clientele. Only Miro is not growing heirloom tomatoes or making organic wine—he’s growing weed. And when Miro hits the big time by winning Amsterdam’s famed Cannabis Cup, cannasseurs & ganjaficionados aren’t the only people who want a piece of him & his mind-blowing pot that tastes like mangoes—and Miro is quickly hit with a bullet.
A mild-mannered hipster who doesn’t know the first thing about revenge—or even who shot him—Miro is soon on a quest to recover his prize invention & to secure his place as the Floyd Zaiger (creator of the pluot) of weed. It’s a journey packed with a delicious cast of characters, including a string-theory obsessed cop, a kinky paramedic, a Mormon missionary struggling to keep his “sap” under control in a city that is the personification of sex, a half-Irish-half-Salvadoran drug dealer and his dim-witted associates, a cougar starlet, & an entrepreneur who wants to turn his medical marijuana Compassion Centers into the Starbucks of pot.
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“Baked is a hilarious, rip-roaring romp from a talented, utterly original novelist. “Very funny . . . A sweet love story, raunchy sex, outrageous behavior, & a couple of murders.” — The Boston Globe
“Murder, mayhem, marijuana & Mormons—what more could you ask for in a crime novel?” — Lisa Lutz, New York Times–bestselling author of The Spellman Files & The Passenger
“Between these covers, my friends, Mark Haskell Smith has harvested & served up the best kind of hybrid: at once a pulp mystery, demented comedy, & meditation on little ideas like greed, desire, & decency. Baked is original, subversive, a bit mind-expanding, & fully irresistible—a laugh a minute romp... — Charles Bock, author of Beautiful Children