Jeff Johnson was born in coastal Massachusetts and grew up in Winston-Salem, scenic Los Angeles, Houston, Albuquerque, and parts of Missouri. He moved to Portland, Oregon as a runaway teen fleeing the foster home system and he not only lived but prospered. In a stroke of good fortune, early on he found work as a line cook at the famed Cajun Cafe, where the Portland legacy of James Beard mingled with the magnificent commis circle of Paul Prudhomme. He began working as a tattoo artist at 19, and rose to international recognition with the publication of his memoir, Tattoo Machine, Tall Tales, True Stories, and My Life In Ink. Critical acclaim for The Crimes of Darby Holland Trilogy and Deadbomb Bingo Ray cemented his status as a rising voice in crime noir, and he’s been branching out ever since, with the literary novel Knottspeed: A Love Story, the modern urban fantasy Everything Under The Moon and now the science mystery novella I Shop At Laney’s. He’s been interviewed by Rolling Stone, Reuters, and TIME, enjoyed several inglorious stints on NPR, and been favorably reviewed by The New York Post, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Denver Post, The London Times, The Missoulian, and many more. His original screenplay Lemonade is in development with Lucky Penny (Tony Dennison/The Closer, Sternman Productions) and his original screenplay Moto Gaucho is in early pre-production in Washington State with Keef Army Films, with Jeff Johnson in line to direct. His first short film, The Kinjiku, starring Tom Hildreth, Tony Dennison and Ron Canada, was produced by Mark Harris, the Academy Award winning producer of Crash. He currently lives in Southeast Asia with his wife, the artist Sylvia Mann, where he’s exploring regional tattooing for a television series.

“I haven’t had this much fun reading anything since I read True Grit years back. I Shop At Laney’s is an utterly original book with a wild strange plot made plausible by voice and setting details and exceptional writing. Overnight I find that I’m a Jeff Johnson fan.” —James P. Blaylock, World Fantasy Award-winning author of The Last Coin

“Jeff Johnson is a master of characterization and suspense. I Shop At Laney’s will keep you riveted and enchanted from the first page to the last.” —Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of The Oppenheimer Alternative

“…lowdown drunken partners on the realistic poverty road, what seems like fantasy for most of the story, becomes advanced science fiction at the end, and makes it into unified fiction that works wonderfully.” —Norman Spinrad, Prix Apollo winner and multiple Hugo and Nebula Award nominee

I Shop At Laney’s is out NOW! Go get one! Limited edition hardback at select bookstores, trade paperback, and ebook on Amazon at the link above.

Check out the I Shop At Laney’s book trailer, link above, and special thanks to Abstract Creative in San Fransisco. The jingle is contagious, the idea itself is priceless, well done Mikel Ross!

I Shop At Laney’s, the audiobook, is coming soon! Holy Moly! This whole process has been an epic blast!

I Shop At Laney’s book trailer #2

THE KILLER CRIMES ANTHOLOGY! Featuring stories by Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Stewart O'Nan, Lisa Preston, Bill Pronzini, Kate Moretti, Jeff Johnson, and James Renner!

“Jeff Johnson is a gifted and natural storyteller, and he knows about things you don’t know.”-John Irving

“Absolutely fascinating.” WASHINGTON POST

“One of the best books I’ve read so far this year…” –Jeff VanderMeer, New York Times Bestselling author Annihilation

 “Equally hilarious, alarming, heartbreaking, rebellious, and philosophical, Tattoo Machine gets inside your head...” ---Donald Ray Pollack , bestselling author of The Heavenly Table

“Funny, outlandish, and sometimes disturbing…” --NEW YORK POST

 “Jeff Johnson’s own remarkable story weaves through this engaging and gritty examination of the world of tattoos. With lyrical punch and plenty of scabrous behind-the-scenes shenanigans, Tattoo Machine is an informative, intelligent delight.”--Katherine Dunn, author of Geek Love 

“Magnificent. Lovingly wrapped in Johnson’s gift for riveting storytelling and flair for translating the vividly visual into prose.” – THE TORONTO STAR

“The Portland-based inkman shares some of the weirdest, wackiest, most disgusting details of his profession…” —TIME MAGAZINE

“-Johnson’s stingly profane prose, storytelling chops, and offbeat sensibility definitely get under the reader’s skin.”—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

“The bastard lovechild of Charles Bukowski and Raymond Chandler, Lucky Supreme is a novel so good you’ll want to ink it into your skin.”-Craig Johnson, author of the Walt Longmire Mysteries, the basis of Netflix’s hit drama Longmire.

“I didn’t know anyone could do noir like this. Now I know Jeff Johnson can.”— Joe R. Lansdale, Edgar Award and World Fantasy Award Winner of The Drive In and Hap & Leonard

“Johnson launches the first of a noir trilogy with this highly original caper novel. Darby Holland is the proprietor of the Lucky Supreme, a tattoo parlor in the Old Town neighborhood of Portland, Ore., where he and his artists, a gang of societal misfits, have created their own niche within this gentrifying community. Johnson, a veteran tattoo artist, captures the conflict between the two cultures perfectly without any false sentiment . . . The inventive, unorthodox Darby effectively marshals his forces against thugs, officials, and even federal agents in this amusing crime tale.”--PUBLISHERS WEEKLY Starred Review

“As hip and cool as the neon rain-slicked streets of Portland. Darby Holland is a modern hero in the mold of Sam Spade and Marlowe only with more tattoos and in steel-toed boots. A funny and very gritty book with cool folks, cool music, and wonderful sense of place.” –Ace Atkins, New York Times Bestselling author of The Innocents

“What wonderful Northwest noir. LUCKY SUPREME cruises through Portland's underworld with a raunchy grace and an unfailing sense of black humor. I loved it.” --New York Times bestselling author T. Jefferson Parker

“Quick, thrilling, this is a novel filled with many crimes and is just the beginning of what looks to be a very interesting trilogy.”—SUSPENSE MAGAZINE

“Johnson wields the lurid pen of twentieth century crime novelists like Raymond Chandler and Mickey Spillane and stands with contemporaries like Michael Connelly and Walter Mosley to grace the grit of dark streets.”—THE EUGENE WEEKLY  

“More please.”— MYSTERY SCENE MAGAZINE

"Johnson’s frenetic follow-up to Lucky Supreme opens with a bang…takes readers on a wickedly rough, terribly strange, oddly amusing trip." –-Publishers Weekly on A Long Crazy Burn

“…the good guys come from the side-show tents, the bad guys have escaped from the cages, and the mayhem is managed by a ringmaster with a surgeon's touch and a comic's timing.  Bravo."—Les Standiford, NYT best-selling author of Last Train To Paradise

“Jeff Johnson is the real deal. His work is fast and funny, down and dirty—one moment as smooth as 18-year-old bourbon and the next as rough as a country road. A great talent, a pleasure to read.”–Brad Smith, Dashiell Hammett Prize-nominee

Lucky Supreme in Italian! Print and audiobook! And both are super fuckin’ magnificent!

ROLLING STONE INTERVIEW! Click on the rectangle below! Big J talks punk, food, life, writing, and more, so cool it’s frozen solid!

I Bastardi Di Old Town. What a rockin’ cover. Pleased to be in business with Fanucci Editore. Their editions are stylish, well-crafted, simply a cut above. The people are honest, too.

“This is a really good book full of bad people you’ll sorely miss as soon as you're not reading about them anymore. Get started and you’ll get over it sooner.”—Thomas Perry, New York Times bestselling author of The Bomb Maker

“The Animals After Midnight is the literary equivalent of Quentin Tarantino directing a season of Portlandia with the spirit of Charles Bukowski consulting.”—Dave Zeltserman, author of Small Crimes

“Elmore Leonard fans should be pleased.” — PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

11th printing for Deadbomb is official! Ray and Skuggy rock on!

“This evil strut of a book is wildly smart, utterly warped and exultant in its own mad glory.” --Warren Ellis, Transmetropolitan

 “We lost George V. Higgins too long ago; thank goodness we now have Jeff Johnson. Deadbomb Bingo Ray is a shot of good old 70's muscle-noir for 2017, written with a bounce and a turn of phrase that elevates it above the pack. If this guy's under your radar, recalibrate!”
--Sean Doolittle, multiple award winning author of The Cleanup and Rain Dogs

“Hard-boiled, hilarious, and as serious as a straight razor. It has more good ideas, great jokes, and splendid writing on one page than most books have in a full chapter.”—Tim Halinan, author of Simeon Grist, Poke Rafferty, and the Junior Bender series

“…Descriptive gems—“the costume brought out the side of him that was dangerous in a next-level way, beyond angry beehive and well into biblical-serpent territory”—make Johnson’s writing a rare treat.” –PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

“Bound to attract fans of Norman Green, Roger Hobbs, and Max Allan Collins’s “Quarry” novels, as well as the gritty works of Stuart MacBride and Pete Dexter.” --Pick of the month- Library Journal Review

“Jeff Johnson writes with a poet's rhythm, a boxer's attitude and an artist's sense of style and flair.”--Norman Green, Shamus Award Winner of The Last Gig

The infamous Deadbomb Bingo Ray is a high-level fixer in the City of Brotherly Love. He’s the man you call when you’ve crossed the line into hopelessness and there’s no way back to anywhere.

Three years have passed since Ray burned a hedge fund manager on behalf of a pool of retirees, and now the money man is back for revenge. While Ray unravels the plot and orchestrates some payback of his own, he unwittingly steps into the ultimate high-stakes game. Falling in love with the beautiful physicist trapped at the edge of the burn was just bad timing.

This book is available on AMAZON and Barnes and Noble but click on the trusty button below and buy it from JJ’s pals at this GREAT PLACE!

“A briskly paced, splatter-filled crime novel to delight fans of directors Tarantino and Rodriguez.” --KIRKUS REVIEWS

 “This is the werewolf as you haven’t seen it before: talking like a Richard Kadrey novel, walking through Charlie Huston’s dark streets, and snarling like a Jim Harrison creature.” -Steven Graham Jones, author of Mongrels

“In Jeff Johnson’s world, the volume is always cranked up to eleven, the violence is cranked up to the max, and it’s just one damned thing after another. The pace is fast, the plot is racing and restraint has been kicked into the gutter. … And it’s got werewolves. What more do you want?”--Simon R. Green, New York Times Bestselling Author of Tales from the Nightside

“Through dark, sarcastic humor glazed with cynical insights into the human condition, Johnson turns readers into confused collaborators in the outlandish, death-defying schemes through which Knottspeed drags his broken body. Bullets fly, knives are drawn, and death is waiting to join the fray as the characters cuss, fight, and drink their way out of the dull, uneventful lives they had led before Knottspeed arrived. Will they survive the chaos? Will they survive Knottspeed? All roads collide in Johnson’s irreverent, chaotic novel, with an ending that will leave readers stunned. ” -PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

“Knottspeed is legendary, irreverent and deeply funny, a philosophical love letter to vagabonds and outcasts everywhere.”--Kate Moretti, New York Times Bestselling author of The Vanishing Year

Behold the forward dust jacket image from the limited edition hardback of I Shop At Laney’s! What a great thing to look at AND the central painting of Laney’s Grocery was done by none other than Sylvia Mann, the talented and impossibly sweet wife of Big J! A big round of applause for a job well done!

Jeff Johnson cameo at the pool table, courtesy of the late, great William Neal McPheeters. RIP to a great guy with true vision. Neal was a talented and prolific painter, a fine writer, a veteran comic book man, and a true gentleman. His career spanned more than 50 years and he enjoyed them all, an inspiring testament to the merits of a life in the arts. A sample of his excellent work above from the comic book The Garbacologist, written by Jeff Johnson and based on his Weird Tales story of the same name.

Jeff Johnson getting free WiFi in New York, 2022. Thanks for visiting, here’s a Telephones ditty for your trouble.