Loved it. The way the author describes the lead character's thought process- the self centeredness, the impulsiveness, the self justification. The story of a so so married NYC man who comes across a man who abused him as a child and takes decisive action in retribution and slowly spins out of control. Excellent portrayal of the cruel spin of fortuna (with his job and wife). Rather distressing conclusion to the back but I was willing to go with it. Left unanswered: Did the wife have the affair with that tennis jerk or not... is that supposed to be left open? ( )

My first Jason Starr. I'm reading this novel in tandem with "Light's Out" and I sense a running theme.

I'm always a sucker for novels with amoral characters, or unsatisfying endings. This one has plenty of that. Richard Segal looks like a normal guy in every sense of the word. He doesn’t manifest any overt psychological abnormalities if his life. At the beginning everything is running smoothly, but when problems arose, he reverted to his primal state of psychopathology.

Starr likes to draw his characters from everyday life, make everything seem pretty normal. And then he punches you in the stomach... He pushes his story lines and his characters to extremes, and takes it from there.

Character-driven fiction that starts bad and gets worse, but not necessarily with a dark, relentless tone. I don’t need to like the characters I’m reading about, but I need to understand them. That's fully on display here. I like reading about fucked-up characters...

He was able to capture the perverse pleasures, edgy excitement and dark humour of what I see as twenty-first century noir. I've been into 21st-century noir fiction lately, and I was told in vigorous terms that I should start reading Jason Starr. The vigour and diversity of recent literary noir are difficult to convey in a brief review. That's also not the point here. What's definitely the point here is that Jason Starr is worth keeping an eye on.

One of Starr’s strong points is his ability to make uncompromising pulp traditionalism seem both radical and fresh. More than most authors, Jason Starr uses the workplace as a setting to fuel tensions (vide Richard Segal's interactions with his boss Bob).

What definitely won me over was the abrupt ending. What a stunt. Fitting as hell.
" ( )

I happened to see this on the shelf at the library as I was looking at what they had by Dan Simmons. I read the back and saw that he was compared to Jim Thompson. "We'll see about that," I thought, skeptically. The book passed my first page test, so I checked it out with relatively low expectations.

Wow. This is simply a magnificent book that really challenges the line drawn between "literature" and crime fiction.

Fans of Thompson, Bukowski, Fante, and many of the other writers I enjoy (see a list here) should really take note of this. The lead character has that outsider's view on things, despises douche-baggy frat-boy types, and generally has a cynical outlook. We find out what happens when a guy like that recalls blocked memories of being molested as a kid by running into his molester on the street.

Starr really takes the time to establish his characters--ultimately this novel has such a strong pull because of the insights Starr provides into what drives these people. The plot, here, is extremely interesting, but as a thriller the book is far less about unfurling some tinkertoy plot than finding out WHAT HAPPENS TO THIS GUY.

You just don't tend to find this kind insightful, honest writing in combination with interesting stories. I will have to hold myself back now from going on a Starr binge. Magnificent. ( )