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The Players
The Players
Jan 28, 2026 9:54 AM

Author:Zander Martin

The Players

Two friends are about to embark on the trip of a lifetime.

Meet Pete: an utter failure when it comes to women and in desperate need of a lucky break.

Meet Pete's best friend, CJ: an old college buddy who just so happens to have the magic touch when it comes to love.

Together they embark on an epic tour across Europe, from the red lights of Amsterdam to the party town of Reykjavik. Along the way, they'll meet a whole range of women. One in particular will blow them away.

The question is, will one of them be able to win her over?

Reviews

'Has the energy of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the inventiveness of Alice in Wonderland...It has also an intelligent wit and a truly original grim and comic grasp of the nature of things'

—— The Sunday Times

'Our best comic novelist'

—— New Scientist

'I'm addicted to Terry Pratchett'

—— A.S. Byatt

The tone of Huxley's story matches the title: it is a rich, full yellow which suggests the exhilarating glow of summer

—— Times Literary Supplement

Can be scoffed at one sitting … tasty!

—— Cosmopolitan

Wonderfully nasty...Extraordinarily vicious, deeply cynical and thoroughly depraved, but it's also bed-wettingly funny... American Psycho meets Spinal Tap... except more evil, more shocking and much, much funnier

—— Scotsman

A rollicking tale of record company excess...Hysterical...Niven worked in the UK music industry for 10 years and his insider knowledge pays off...This is truly an account of a lost era, a brilliant description of the last decadent blow-out.

—— Independent on Sunday

John Niven's Kill Your Friends might just be the most exciting British novel since Trainspotting...Although the tone - a mixture of breathtakingly black-hearted cynicism, hyperbolically dark comedy and liberal sprinklings of violence - will invite comparisons with American Psycho and Bright Lights Big City, Niven brings a uniquely vibrant tone to the page with take-no-prisoners language that manages to be equal parts comic and shocking.

—— Word Magazine

The fickle music industry is ripe for satire and here former record-label man Niven creates a compelling and hilarious portrait.

—— Shortlist

Dark, twisted...and also laugh-out-loud funny

—— TNT Magazine

Absolutely riveting

—— Daily Express

One of the evilest, most vicious, despicable characters ever. I couldn't put it down.

—— James Dean Bradfield, The Manic Street Preachers

Anyone working in or trying to get into the music industry should read this book. Niven grotesquely portrays the short term disposability of this world with a great eye for detail and a stockpile of hilarious insults. Throw in some murder and major brand obsession and you have an indie American Psycho.

—— James Brown

Kill Your Friends gladly hammers the final and needed nail into the coffin of self-serving and undignified spin that was "Cool Britannia". It exposes a world that seethes alongside us and in which we all collude but whose nasty little machinery is rarely glimpsed. The novel is furiously, filthily funny, and, I imagine, tragically true.

—— Niall Griffiths

An amazing piece of work - as powerful as it is ugly

—— Greil Marcus

A piece of writing that will be admired by anyone who's interested in the era that made our own and those who read it are unlikely to forget its cool, Updikean temperament

—— Andrew O’Hagan

The narrative drive is irresistible. Well done to Niven for a giving voice to the sleazy foot soldiers of rock and roll

—— Independent on Sunday

A fine novella - as evocative as it is moving

—— Observer

A moving book that succeeds not just in vividly evoking its time and place but in distilling one young man's clichéd and minor destiny into something approaching tragedy

—— New York Times

Often stunning, dark and densely imagined...one man's elegy for a bygone age

—— LA Weekly

The funniest writer ever to put words to paper

—— Hugh Laurie

The greatest comic writer ever

—— Douglas Adams

P.G. Wodehouse wrote the best English comic novels of the century

—— Sebastian Faulks

Sublime comic genius

—— Ben Elton

You don't analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour

—— Stephen Fry
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