Bargain @ $2.99 in the US only from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (this one is non-couponable; price should be the same at all the usual stores):
A Scanner Darkly by the late Philip K. Dick, his vintage classic dystopian novel (
Wikipedia) of drug use and abuse in a futuristic (circa 1977) California counterculture, which won the British Fantasy Society Award and was also adapted to film and graphic novel.
Bob Arctor is a junkie and a drug dealer, both using and selling the mind-altering Substance D. Fred is a law enforcement agent, tasked with bringing Bob down. It sounds like a standard case. The only problem is that Bob and Fred are the same person. Substance D doesn’t just alter the mind, it splits it in two, and neither side knows what the other is doing or that it even exists. Now, both sides are growing increasingly paranoid as Bob tries to evade Fred while Fred tries to evade his suspicious bosses.
In this award-winning novel, friends can become enemies, good trips can turn terrifying, and cops and criminals are two sides of the same coin. Dick is at turns caustically funny and somberly contemplative, fashioning a novel that is as unnerving as it is enthralling.