From Publishers Weekly
Murder stalks a love triangle in New York City in Starr's low-key thriller, his most crowd-pleasing novel to date. Katie Porter believes her encounter at the health club with Peter Wells is total chance. What she doesn't know is that Peter once dated her sister back in her hometown and has elaborate plans to marry her, after waiting a couple of weeks for the perfect romantic moment to pop the question. And she doesn't have a clue that her current boyfriend, Andy Barnett, is ready to dump her. A twenty-three-year-old single guy in Manhattan, Andy is a male animal on the prowl, checking out all the action: The clothes were loose, but it looked like she had a nice body—thin anyway, which was all that really mattered. Starr (
Lights Out) is a master at capturing the minute-by-minute lives of vacuous yuppies, and he absolutely shines with these characters. When Peter decides he needs to eliminate the competition, this
Looking for Ms. Goodbar suddenly becomes a very funny, dark social satire.
(Aug.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Starr writes dark comedies about dim bulbs. Sometimes it works--
Lights Out (2006) featured an entertaining premise and a frantic pace--and sometimes it doesn't, which is the case here. Set in the party-hearty world of twentysomething Manhattanites,
The Follower offers a tepid premise (a stalker sets his sights on a shallow young woman[...]), formulaic satire (the characters say
like a lot and shop at Banana Republic), and uninspired delivery (the characters use cliches, and so does the author). It's a thriller with no thrills. If we cared about the characters, it might be suspenseful, but one suspects that even Starr doesn't care about them. It's fine if they're shallow jerks, but couldn't they be
interesting shallow jerks? A better writer would search for sparks of humanity even in psychos and lame-o's. Many consider Starr a rising star in the genre, and his name on a spine will draw fans. But he often coasts, and here he has taken it out of gear entirely: this trip to the singles bars will leave readers desperate for a ride home.
Keir GraffCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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