'Lukins' prose is supple and elegant ... his doomed and flailing Gulch family are a stunning comic creation. But even as they writhe and scheme under the law's heel, Lukins builds a highly empathetic study around them, painting all the pathologies that mark our inequitable age.' Jock Serong, author of Cherrywood

'Robert Lukins is an always elegant, supremely intelligent, bitingly funny chameleon: sign me up for everything he ever writes.' Kate Mildenhall, author of The Hummingbird Effect


Against the backdrop of the last decadent gasps of the twentieth century, Somebody Down There Likes Me asks what might happen if we finally get what we deserve.
The Gulch family have led a charmed existence in the ultra-wealthy enclave of Belle Haven, Connecticut. Now, the empire they have built is on the edge of collapse, and as the decades of fraud and criminality that lies beneath the family's incredible wealth is exposed, the Gulch children are summoned.

Kick Gulch, desperate and broke, is drawn back into the unreal world she thought she'd escaped forever.

Her brother, Lincoln, one of Belle Haven's shining stars, is revelling in its culture of power and excess, and masterminding his ascendancy.

At the head of the family are Honey and Fax, circling each other as the authorities close in. Fax is drawn out of his dreamlife of drug-fuelled fantasies, while Honey is willing to reshape the world to see what they have built survive.

As tensions rise and conspiracies are forced to the surface, the truth behind the disappearance of Kick's high school friend comes into question, with each of them facing the complicity of their silence. The ramifications of the family's decades of ruthlessness and inaction are tragic and far-reaching.

For fans of The Secret History, The Corrections and Succession, Robert Lukins has written a brilliant, acerbic dissection of wealth, power and the tragedies even money can't fix.