From Publishers Weekly
In this strangely fascinating riff off classic noir, baseball slugger Jake Thomas gets a hero's welcome on a quick trip home to Canarsie. With millions in endorsements on the line, he's anxious to announce a wedding date with his high school sweetheart, Christina, hoping to counteract a statutory rape claim that's about to go public. But his fiancée has been seeing former pitcher Ryan Rossetti, who blew out his arm and now works a dead-end job as a house painter. Insanely jealous of the "J.T. fever" sweeping the hood, the self-involved Ryan is determined to keep Christina for himself. Starr (
Twisted City) is a master at portraying Brooklyn as a dark corner of hell (and even gives genre fans a taste of one of the sexual obsessions of past noir master David Goodis), but J.T and Ryan prove almost too unpleasant to take. When the ex-con Saiquan comes into play, riding along for some payback on a gang shooting, the plot jumps into overdrive and heads mercilessly for Starr's always bleak finish line.
Author tour. (Sept.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
In high school, Jake Thomas and Ryan Rossetti were two of Brooklyn's most promising baseball players. Jake's natural talent carried him to fame and fortune, and Ryan's love of the curveball led him to elbow surgery and a $10-per-hour job as a painter. The one thing Ryan has that Jake doesn't is the love of Jake's fiancee, Christina--and J. T. is coming home to plan the wedding. Starr's characters, who inhabit unglamorous Canarsie, are capital-
L Losers, and it's fun to watch their dimwitted decision making (J. T. thinks that announcing his wedding date will balance the bad PR of a statutory rape charge). They scheme and strive, exerting a remarkable amount of energy to end up, well, pretty much where they were. With his feel for the streets and his diverse cast of characters, this slice of the confused life reads a bit like George Pelecanos or Richard Price without the philosophical heft. Starr sometimes seems like he is coasting, but in his seventh book, he puts it in gear to give us a wickedly entertaining ride down a dead-end street.
Keir GraffCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
