My debut novel will be published in the US in July, by No Frills Buffalo.
While trying to heist a casino in the Cambodian jungle, Apollo has a crippling panic attack. But he's no seasoned criminal, he's a filmmaker, and he's heisting the casino so he can use the story for the first season of a preposterously ambitious TV show he hopes to sell to HBO or Netflix or some other global streaming powerhouse. Spoiler alert: his panic attack stuffs up the heist. As punishment, his partners slice off his right pinkie. But the show is all he has, so Apollo bandages his stump and heads off on a search for stories that will take him to the steaming streets of Saigon, the glittering hills above Hollywood, and all the way back to the dark and damp Cambodian jungle, where he may or may not be forced to dig his own grave.
"An absolute dazzler of a debut with truly staggering scope. Taylor's singular style punches through every paragraph, recalling the madcap madness of Vonnegut and Palahniuk with the pacing and black humour of A.M Holmes. Entirely unpredictable but endlessly inventive, the book infuses heart and guts into Apollo's endlessly existential quest for perfect content. Strap yourself in. This one goes off like a rocket."
– Jonathan Seidler, staff writer at Esquire, author of It's A Shame About Ray and All The Beautiful Things You Love
Please Let Me Destroy You is as gut-bustlingly hilarious as it is giddily absurd. There are moments where it feels like Rupert Taylor doesn’t want to decide what type of novel he’s writing: love story, heist, influencer satire, black comedy, or drug-fueled nightmare, but in the end – it really does not matter – because Taylor concocts a brilliant literary stew of them all in this unnecessarily gorgeous debut.
— Craig Buchner, author of Brutal Beasts and Fish Cough