"Mickey Prada is a nice kid." So says the blurb of Jason Starr's fifth novel (and second Vintage Crime/Black Lizard paperback original). But being nice never helped a Starr protagonist. From the first scene - a Mafia wise guy walks into the fish shop where Mickey works - you just know he's going to hell. Even the odd ray of light along the way - a chance of romance as Mickey struggles to get out of trouble - soon fades.
The place is New York. The characters are dubious friends, slimy bookies, bosses from hell, crazed fathers who mistake you for a burglar and take a slash at your throat with a kitchen knife. Starr's strength is characterisation of such low-life, and he can mark out a new face as bad news with a couple of physical observations. (A fellow team member on Mickey's bowling team barely ever says a word, and has a lower lip that hangs down, exposing crooked lower teeth.) While it can be easy to hang a "baddie" badge on someone, Starr avoids stereotyping by sticking with the same characters and rooting out their motivations, where any are to be found.
Tough Luck is set in the eighties. Period touches tell you: Grandmaster Flash on the radio, big hair, awful clothing. Although no unique social aspect of the era appears to affect the plot, the setting adds to the sweet feeling of despair the novel leaves you with. 1984 was just before the economic boom that gave us yuppies and mobile phones. People were flash and opportunities abounded, and if a young man in New York couldn't make something of himself, he was lost.
As in Starr's previous novels, the reader is invited to make friends with a personable hero, then watch in horror as the author shoves him from one bad situation to a worse one. Starr is a modern master of a classic noir trope: ordinary Joe gone bad. He has been justifiably (if a little lazily) compared to Jim Thompson and James M. Cain, but I would argue that after five novels it is clear he is doing something different. Starr does not deal with crooks. He deals with the man sitting at the desk next to you, the voice on the end of a cold call, the kid who hands over your change. The thing that drives them all is the desire to get on in a world of high expectations and disintegrating communities. He shows us a bad place, but it never seems that far away.
Copyright© 2003 Charlie Williams
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CHARLIE WILLIAMS was
born and raised in England, and educated in Wales and France. His short stories
have appeared in The Third Alternative, Time Out Neonlit,
and other publications. His debut novel - Deadfolk - is out from
Serpent's Tail in 2004.