A Wee Review - Cold Caller by Jason Starr

Before reading Cold Caller, my only exposure to Jason Starr’s work had been his collaboration with Ken Bruen in the form of the black comedy crime caper, The Max. And I enjoyed that one a lot, so I picked up Starr’s debut with pretty high expectations. The New Yorker didn’t disappoint.

Bill Moss works as a phone jockey (or cold caller) at a telemarketing firm in New York. He’s less than happy in his job. What was initially seen as a temporary stint in a position he was overqualified for has lasted for over a year. His hours are unsociable and the work is mind-numbing, even though he’s one of the best telemarketers in the firm. You see, he was once a rising VP in an advertising company, and his current situation is quite a step down. So, all that potential and intelligence that isn’t going into his job has to go somewhere else, right? Yeah. Unfortunately, ol’ Bill puts his idle hands to the devil’s work, and he’s just not cut out for success in that field.

Cold Caller is a dark piece of work. Bill Moss is portrayed as a typical enough fellow in his thirties, and I imagine some of his gripes and frustrations would seem pretty familiar to a lot of readers. So when he makes his descent into depravity in such a progressive and believable fashion, you’re left with the feeling that we’re all just a few bad decisions and a temper-tantrum away from losing ourselves in psychosis.

I enjoyed the straight-forward writing and the everyday scenarios that serve as a backdrop for the shocking mistakes Bill Moss makes. Jason Starr talks about his own career as a telemarketer on his website, and it’s easily seen that a lot of what he saw and felt from that part of his life made its way into Cold Caller. The office politics and work situations just come across as so real. Luckily, he has the skill to present only the interesting and necessary from this world rather than bore the reader with self-indulgent anecdotes. There is just enough reality to make Bill Moss’s actions all the more shocking.

And then there’s the ending. Man, I loved it. I’d go on about it here, but you’d hate me for detracting so much of the book’s impact. I’ll just say that it’s definitely one of the most just conclusions to a character journey that I’ve come across in a long time. Cold Caller is an outstanding example of noir fiction. I’ll look out for more from Jason Starr.

A Wee Review - Once Were Cops by Ken Bruen

I’ve noted in a previous post that 2008 was a great year for Ken Bruen and his fans. The Max (co-written with Jason Starr), American Skin (UK and Ireland edition), Sanctuary (UK and Ireland edition) and Once Were Cops (US edition) were all released last year. Having just finished Once Were Cops I’m now three for four on reading and reviewing these titles. Sanctuary will have to wait until I’ve read the other Jack Taylor novels, but I will get there. More than likely this year.

So, Once Were Cops --

Violence, corruption and heartache?

What do you think?

Sparse?

Buddy, you betcha.

Poetry in prose?

More so than American Skin, even.

Bruen was still able to make me burn with jealousy by delivering a killer line or two per page, but in this case, it was an even more impressive feat. There's not a whole lot of prose on those pages. The book’s typesetting is pretty idiosyncratic, (hanging line indents and white space between mostly single sentence paragraphs) but teamed up with Ken’s ability to deliver a knockout punch in three or four words, this worked to increase the urgency in the writing. Once Were Cops is a short book, but even so, for me to finish it in little over a day is something close to remarkable. I’m not exactly blessed with an excess of reading time these days. Thankfully, Bruen weaves his usual magic that keeps you reading, “Just one more paragraph, page or chapter!” It forced me to find the time.

Did he blow this reader away?

Sure, doesn’t he always? May as well have swung a hurling stick at me.

As with American Skin, Bruen uses both strict first person and shifting third person. The anti-hero, Michael O'Shea (AKA Shea), is the sole-focus of the intimate first person scenes, and through it, Bruen fully explores a blacker-than-night mind. A driven sociopath. A complete and utter... Well, Ken Bruen tells it better. Best you just read it and learn more about Shea from him.

Outside of Shea, we’ve a good cast of intriguing characters, but Kebar stands head and shoulders above them all, both physically and metaphorically. A big ol’ NYC psycho-cop, it’s inevitable that Shea, an Irish guard on an exchange programme with the NYPD, should be teamed up with him. What isn’t quite expected is how each of these cops relates to the other, and who gets what from whom. Cryptic? Yeah, sorry about that, but I want you to get what I got from this book without me interfering. So, I’m not even going to tell you about the short cameo at the start of the novel. It’s a good one, though.

In conclusion, Once Were Cops is so good that I’m itching to reread it already.

What more can I say?

A Wee Review - The Max by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr - Tag Team Style

Mike Stone. Thanks for passing along the copy of The Max Ken Bruen signed for me. He’s a real gent, isn’t he?

Gerard Brennan. Yeah, Mister Bruen’s a legend.

MS. I, um, noticed a crease or two on the spine. Like it had been read before it reached me…

GB. Um... ach, I can’t lie. It was me. Sorry, I couldn’t help it. The cover art seduced me.

MS. That’s understandable. I love the covers to the Hard Case Crime books too; they’re just so evocative of a bygone era. Pulp became unfashionable for a while, a word synonymous with below-par quality, so kudos to Hard Case for turning that on its head and producing these gorgeous quality paperbacks. But the words, man, what did you think of the words?

GB. Aye, right. The words are the important thing, aren’t they? Well, I’ll tell you this. A couple of weeks before I started up CSNI, I read Priest by Ken Bruen. I was knocked out, man. Such poetry in prose. I lost hours of sleep trying to cram more of it into my skull. Now, The Max is a little different in form, and I reckon that’s down to Jason Starr’s influence. But it’s not a bad influence at all. There’s a lot of recognisably Bruen stuff in there, so a fan won’t be disappointed, but whatever Starr brings to the mix really contributes rather that retracts. Seems to me like it’s a match made in crime fiction heaven. And now I’ve added Starr’s Cold Caller to the reading pile. You?

MS. Well, on the strength of The Max I’m putting the first two books by Bruen and Starr, Bust and Slide, on my shopping list. Nuff said.

GB. Yeah, they’re Brennan must-haves now as well. One of the greatest strengths of the book was the barmy cast. I mean, from Max to Angela to Sebastian, such a troop of ne’er-do-wells have rarely been crammed into such a slim tome. It’d be hard to choose, but did any emerge as a favourite for you?

MS. Ne’er-do-wells… Now there’s an understatement! Was there anybody who wasn’t completely amoral, delusional or just plain psychotic in this book? My favourite character, Max Fisher, the self-styled The M.A.X., epitomised all three. I laughed my head off several times at his antics. Such as when he is locked up in Attica with a huge black guy named Rufus who promises to have his white ass by nightfall. Max spends the first chapters imagining the horrors awaiting him but getting off on the attention. He’s so delusional, he’s priceless. Watching him rise through the prison hierarchy by a series of misunderstandings was a joy. And his treatment of the female author charged with writing his life story was pure gold.

GB. I know what you mean about The M.A.X. His ex-wife Angela, though. Man, she was one knockout über-femme fatale. Those Greek islands just didn’t know what hit them. And that electricity/poison between her and shady Lee Child lookalike, Sebastian, tickled and then saddened me. I had a place in my heart for that crazy lady. She’d have scared the bejesus out of me, but if I’d met somebody like Angela before hooking up with my lovely wife, who knows what I’d be up to now? Probably rotting in a Mexican jail, actually. You know, I heard it on the grapevine that The Max is being studied in NYU as an example of post-modern angst. Why couldn’t we have studied books like this at school?

MS. They’re warping young minds with Hard Case Crime? Heh, what the hell is post-modern angst when its at home, anyway? Well, I hope the teachers don’t take it too seriously, because it’s a book the word ‘rollicking’ was invented for. Crude, bonkers, lusty, and black as treacle. I loved it. It gets five stars from me.

GB. And in the spirit of Irish hyperbole, I’ll give it a galaxy.

A Wee Review - Fifty-to-One, by Charles Ardai

The concept of this book is an interesting one. Charles Ardai (along with Max Phillips) founded Hard Case Crime just about five years ago with the intention to bring the world “...the best in hardboiled crime fiction, ranging from lost noir masterpieces to new novels by today’s most powerful writers, featuring stunning original cover art in the grand pulp style.” A commendable mission statement, wouldn’t you say? Or is it a company objective? I can’t remember.

Anyway, back to the book’s concept. Fifty-to-One is the fiftieth pulp-style paperback to be released under the HCC label, and to mark the achievement, Ardai challenged himself to write an old fashioned crime caper with a chapter named after each of the books in the series. In the order they were released! What a cool idea. But what kind of a man puts himself through something like that?

A talented one, it would seem.

The more cynical among us might point out that Ardai is in a pretty nice position as editor of HCC, and to release a novel through your own publishing imprint isn’t as big an achievement as it would be to sell it somewhere else. Well, I’m not that cynical. Not anymore. Because in reading Fifty-to-One I’ve gained at least a little insight into what Ardai must have put himself through to make it fly. I mean, some of those chapter titles are just out there, yet they all snap into place to form a great tale.

Set in the 1950s the story is told, for the most part, through Tricia Heverstadt, a wet-behind-the-ears country girl from South Dakota. She arrives in New York City at the start of the book and in the first chapter, titled Grifter’s Game, she learns what kind of place the Big Apple is. Penniless and homeless in a city she doesn’t know, and there’s so much more bad luck to come. There are less than a handful of POV switches, including a chapter from a fictional not-so-true crime novel (published by a shady house with a name you might recognise), but Ardai has a nice method of passing the baton from one character to another that keeps it all tidy.

Ardai spins us a fun, comedic yarn featuring smokin’-hot dames, Keystone-type cops, ‘Shut Uppa You Face’ Italian mobsters, crooked bookies, blackmailers, unlicensed boxers, smut-peddling publishers and crime fiction writers. And that’s only the half of it. The writing is straight-forward, the dialogue snappy, and the excitement, twists and action scenes are ever-present. Characters by the name of Spillane, Block and Westlake show up too! It’s a book about bad luck and moxie in the face of adversity. The only thing that disappointed me was the underuse of the word ‘moxie’ but I’ve made up for that now.

The plot is of the variety employed by Declan Burke in his crime caper, The Big O. Fun-filled and coincidence-ridden with some dark undercurrents driving the characters’ motivations. It’s a lovely combination and I’m impressed. But then, you’d expect quality from a writer whose past work has earned him a Shamus Award. Yup, that’s right, folks, a little bit of amateur detection turns up the fact that Charles Ardai’s pseudonym is Richard Aleas (Dick Alias?), and his novel Songs of Innocence won best PI paperback in 2008.

Fifty-to-One is a wisecracking novel from a wizened and highly-respected era. Thanks be to Hard Case Crime for bringing back this kind of book. I want more. Luckily, I’ve a copy of The Max by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr at hand. And I wouldn’t mind a few more titles from the range for Christmas. Just putting it out there guys. Still plenty of shopping days left...

A Mini Interview - Ken Bruen

KEN BRUEN (Bust, Slide, The Max)
The Galway, Ireland-born author of more than a dozen extremely dark crime novels, Ken Bruen was nominated for nearly every major award in the mystery field (and won the Shamus Award) for his book The Guards, the first in his series about Jack Taylor and his first book to be published in the United States. In addition to his work as a novelist, Bruen has a Ph.D. in metaphysics and spent 25 years as a teacher in Africa, Japan, Southeast Asia, and South America.

Q1. Hard Case Crime seems to have become almost a sub-genre over the last five years. To be involved in it must feel like you’ve become part of an exclusive club. What have been some of the highlights of this membership?

To really be part of the most innovative, exciting publishing event of the past 50 years, the covers, who wouldn't kill to see their name on one of those stunning collectors items and to work with Charles, not only fun but a great challenge.

Q2. It’s all about hardboiled, noir and pulp fiction at Hard Case Crime. The golden age of paperback novels in revival. What do you think the future holds for this type of book?

I think it will make the fat cats sit up and clean up their snotty act, to see that a real committed publisher, who obviosuly cares deeply about the readers is going to make them get off their ivory towers.

Q3. One of the most striking things about the Hard Case novels is the beautiful cover artwork. How did you feel when you first saw the covers for your books? How did the art compare to the conception of the characters you had in mind when you were writing the books?

I went...Holy Fook...still do, and the third cover is the most stunning of all.

Q4. What are some crime novels or authors, either within or outside Hard Case, that have impressed you this year?

Richard Aleas, and here's rooting for that Shamus award; Brian McGilloway, he knocks me out; Tony Black, Megan Abbot, Adrian McKinty, the guy is a friggin genius; Christa Faust; Jason Starr, with his new standalone due soon.

Thank you, Ken Bruen!