Chip Jacobs – författare

Investigative reporter Chip Jacobs goes deep into some of his most compelling journalism pieces of the last three decades with his signature spotlight on strange corruption, seedy individuals, megalomaniacs, bright ideas, and transgressive game-changers. Featuring in-depth and expanded stories previously published in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and others, The Vicodin Thieves is an instant classic of crime, politics, and socio-analysis.

A Los Angeles Times bestsellerA CrimeReads 2019 most anticipated/best bookSet against two distinct epochs in the history of Pasadena, California, Arroyo tells the parallel stories of a young inventor and his clairvoyant dog in 1913 and 1993. In both lives, they are drawn to the landmark Colorado Street Bridge, or "Suicide Bridge," as the locals call it, which suffered a lethal collapse during construction but still opened to fanfare in the early twentieth century automobile age. When the refurbished structure commemorates its 80th birthday, one of the planet's best known small towns is virtually unrecognizable from its romanticized, and somewhat invented, past.Wrought with warmth and wit, Jacobs' debut novel digs into Pasadena's most mysterious structure and the city itself. In their exploits around what was then America's highest, longest roadway, Nick Chance and his impish mutt interact with some of the big personalities from the Progressive Age, including Teddy Roosevelt, Upton Sinclair, Charles Fletcher Lummis, and Lilly and Adolphus Busch, whose gardens were once tabbed the "eighth wonder of the world." They cavort and often sow chaos at Cawston Ostrich Farm, the Mount Lowe Railway, the Hotel Green and even the Doo Dah Parade. But it's the secrets and turmoil around the concrete arches over the Arroyo Seco, and what it means for Nick's destiny, that propels this story of fable versus fact.While unearthing the truth about the Colorado Street Bridge, in all its eye-catching grandeur and unavoidable darkness, the characters of Arroyo paint a vivid picture of how the home of the Rose Bowl got its dramatic start.

Late-seventies Los Angeles was rampant with killers and shady characters, but all the go-getters at Space Matters saw was possibility. Richard Kasparov was handsome and charismatic; his younger associate, Jerry Schneiderman, brilliant and nerdy. When the pair hired a veteran contractor to oversee construction, the space planning firm they operated out of a hip mansion in LA’s Miracle Mile district appeared poised to transform the boundless skyline into their jackpot.After the promising team imploded, however, the orderly lines on their blueprints succumbed to treachery and secrets. To get even, one of the ex-partners launched a murder-for-profit corporation using, among other peculiar sorts, a bantam-sized epileptic with a deadeye shot and a cross-dressing sidekick. The hapless criminals required a comical number of attempts to execute their first target. Once they did, on a rainy night in the San Fernando Valley, the surviving founder of Space Matters was thrown into a pressure cooker existence out of a Coen Brothers movie. Threatened for money he didn’t have, he donned a disguise, survived a heart-pounding encounter at the La Brea Tar Pits, and relied on an ex-Israeli mercenary for protection. In the end, he had to outfox a glowering murderer, while asking if you can ever really know anyone in a town where dirty deals send men to their graves.In The Darkest Glare, Chip Jacobs recounts a spectacular, noir-ish, true-crime saga from one of the deadliest eras in American history. You’ll never gaze out windows into the dark again.Included as a bonus is an original true crime short from the same unhinged era. In “Paul & Chuck,” a flashy, crusading attorney wages war against the messianic leader of a bloodthirsty cult determined to teach the world to stay away.

Now a USA Today Bestseller and 2025 Winner of the American Writing Award Winner for General Fiction! In an evocative follow-up to his Los Angeles Times bestselling Arroyo, Chip Jacobs returns with a gripping tale of brotherhood, recklessness, and footloose souls in the anything goes of late-seventies Southern California. As their elite, all-boys prep school turns coed, transforming from suburban Lord of the Flies to gender-roiled soap-opera, two unlikely friends—Luke Burnett and Denny Drummond—alternate rescuing each other from self-destruction amid troubled home lives. Eager to maximize their era as invincible seniors at Stone Canyon Prep, they and their pals commandeer Bob’s Big Boy, explore the secret world beneath Caltech, stumble into a possibly-supernatural lab animal, and grapple with near-ODs at a playoff game. Just as our heroes manage to graduate, their bond is shattered by a wild gunshot that'll haunt them for decades.  Twenty years later, Luke is a high-powered journalist with a nosediving career, while Denny, a visionary software engineer, is socked by a terminal diagnosis. Desperate to make amends for that coyote shot, Denny guilts his estranged friend into helping him, all climaxing with a Hail Mary bid to demystify mortality, with an assist from Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, while reconnecting with what matters most.Later Days is a powerful exploration of the ties that bind and break us. Perfect for readers drawn to rollercoaster friendships, forgiveness, and the raw beauty of life skimming its edges to Near-Death Experience. With insight into Pasadena’s buried histories and the psychological baggage of growing up in the shadows of “Great Men” fathers, Jacobs’ second novel is as emotionally resonant as it is intellectually sharp.

Maverick environmental writers William J. Kelly and Chip Jacobs follow up their acclaimed Smogtown with a provocative examination of China's ecological calamity already imperiling a warming planet. Toxic smog most people figured was obsolete needlessly kills as many as died in the 9/11 attacks every day, while sometimes Grand Canyon-sized drifts of industrial particles aloft on the winds rain down ozone and waterway-poisoning mercury in America. In vivid, gonzo prose blending first-person reportage with exhaustive research and a sense of karma, Kelly and Jacobs describe China's ancient love affair with coal, Bill Clinton's blunders cutting free-trade deals enabling the U.S. to "export" manufacturing emissions to Asia in a shift that pilloried the West's middle class, Communist Party manipulation of eco-statistics, the horror of cancer villages, the deception of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and spellbinding peasant revolts against cancer-spreading plants involving thousands in mostly-censored melees.Ending with China's monumental coal-bases decried by climatologists as a global warming dagger, The People's Republic of Chemicals names names and emphasizes humanity over bloodless statistics in a classic sure to ruffle feathers as an indictment of money as the real green that not even Al Gore can deny.