Pretend this is either an episode of Charlie Rose or a New Yorker podcast and I am a bewhiskered Deborah Treisman with an exorbitant amount of testosterone. For those of you just joining us, I am talking with New York based novelist, Greg Olear, author of the murder mystery/social satire Totally Killer (Harper, 2009). And by talking, I mean I e-mailed Mr. Olear and he didn’t report me to the FBI for stalking.

Jeffrey Pillow: Totally Killer takes place in the dog days of summer 1991 with a plot driven in part by political, social, and economic ramifications of the time. The final months of Bush 41. Beginning of an employment dip. Economic recession. Fast forward to 2009 where the story ends. Bush 43 has just left the White House and left with him the beginning of an employment dip and an economic recession unmatched since the Great Depression. The more things change the more they stay the same. Why ‘91 and ‘09?

Greg Olear: It’s a turning-point year. And not just from one decade to the next. The Yale historian Eric Hobsbawm uses 1991 as a bracket year for his books; The Age of Extremes he locates at 1914-1991. This is not arbitrary—the Gulf War and the collapse of the Soviet Union were huge historical turning points. The eminent astrologer Dane Rudhyar wrote a book called Astrological Timing, in which he pinpoints when the New Age will begin; the final phase of the Piscean Age—or the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, if you will—he locates in 1991. Plus, the web browser was invented in 1991. That might not be on par with, say, the printing press, but it has to be in the same league with television, radio, telephone, and telegraph.

As for 2009… I turned the book in at the end of 2008, which would have been more neatly parallel to 1991, what with a Bush in the White House, but because it came out in 2009, they wanted it set then, to make it current. I didn’t think I could set it any further in the future than July 4, 2009, which was six months after I’d turned it in. Luckily, nothing earth shattering happened in the interim. But if Todd was really writing in mid-2009, he’d have mentioned Twitter, and made more of a big deal about Obama, I think. Perhaps I’ll correct that in the French language version, due for release in le printemps of 2011.

JP: And the setting, the East Village of NYC?

GO: Because it’s the coolest place on earth. Or was, in ’91, before Giuliani and Starbucks.

JP: Wasn’t Giuliani’s first wife his second cousin? Your thoughts on kissing cousins and the recent findings regarding King Tut’s incestual genetics? . . .

Apart from William Melvin Kelley’s 1967 black comedy dem, I have never read a book so swiftly in my born day as Totally Killer by Greg Olear (Harper, 2009). I’ll be frank—though I usually just go by Jeff, Jeffro, or Jeffrey, depending on how well you know me—you don’t need to read any further than the next line to know my true feelings regarding this novel: it is absolutely amazing. Stop reading this column right now and high tail it to Barnes & Noble or log on to Amazon.com and snag a copy . . .

Twenty-three and jobless, the beautifully flawed Taylor Schmidt arrives to the Big Apple in July 1991 a transplant from the rolling hills of Warrensburg, Missouri with an undergraduate degree in English Lit and aspirations of breaking into the world of publishing. What she quickly finds instead are the shuffling, blistered feet of tenderfoot Gen-Xers like herself stretching for city blocks in the sweltering heat, all with resumes in hand, and the sexually overt up-and-downs of power zealot editorial directors.

The pickings slim and competition fierce due to an economic downturn, Taylor stumbles with high heels from one employment agency to the next until being summoned by the Quid Pro Quo employment agency. Led by the august, cocksure Asher Krug, Quid Pro Quo guarantees its adept applicants “jobs to kill for” but at what price?

Written eighteen years later from the perspective of Taylor’s fatally attracted roommate, Todd Lander, Totally Killer is, at first, Lander’s self-confessing memoir—“Once in a lifetime, if you’re lucky, you meet a woman who just does it for you. That was Taylor Schmidt. The chick oozed pheromones. She was sex. And not just for me. Everybody she ever met wanted to sleep with her”—turned cultural satire and murder mystery . . .