Bust

When I first heard of this Bruen/Starr collaboration, I was thrilled as this are two of the best (and two of my favorite) new master of the hardboiled tradition. So expectations were high when I sat down to read the result.Well, BUST delivers. In spades! Watching a "simple" murder plan unravel chapter by chapter is BUST in a nutshell. And what a ride! The pace is rocket speed, the characters wonderfully crooked, crazy, obsessed, inept and memorable. The dialogue is sharp and, at times, laugh out loud funny. If you like great hardboiled fiction, you can't go wrong with BUST. It's everything a great crime novel should be. Destined to be a classic. Don't miss it.

The CEO of NetWorld, Max Fisher, wants his wife dead. He's decided that he's ready to marry his girlfriend Angela -- a fiery Greek-Irish executive assistant with amazing new components -- and start over. Divorce is not an option, what with half of his formidable assets on the line. So Max agrees to meet Angela's cousin's buddy, a hit-man named Popeye. What Max doesn't know is that Popeye is actually Angela's real boyfriend. He's a psychopathic Irish "proveen" -- a small-time enforcer for the "Ra" (IRA), who are smart enough to keep him at arm's length. Predictably, given this cast of characters, the hit goes down, plenty of things go awry, and things start to spin out of control. Compounding matters is a hood named Bobby Rosa, now confined to a wheelchair, who makes his living blackmailing couples engaged in compromising relationships. Through sheer coincidence, Rosa happens to snap some shots of Max and Angela "celebrating" his wife's departure. Once Rosa confronts Fisher -- who is already under heavy police scrutiny -- with the photos, the plot swings in a rush of completely unpredictable turns. You'll be hard-pressed to tell where Bruen's work ends and Starr's begins. The story is seamless and pulse-pounding. The characterizations are deep; you'll feel you've gotten under the skin of Max, Angela, and even the nutcase hit-man. My guess is you won't be able to stop reading until you flip the last page.

BUST is the result of an unholy alliance between Ken Bruen and Jason Starr, two modern masters of noir fiction. They bring together a fearsome and wondrous mix of vile characters on the streets of New York City to create a caper novel worthy of Westlake or Leonard, but with the dark edge of...well, Bruen and Starr. Max Fisher is a software millionaire who's tired of Deirdre, his shrewish, ungrateful and unappreciative wife. The fact that Fisher is seeing Angela Petrakos, his Greek-Irish secretary, isn't helping matters. Angela is the perfect combination of angel and hooker, with a bit of gold digger thrown into the mix. When Fisher wonders out loud what life would be like without Deirdre, Angela wastes no time in setting up a meeting between Fisher and a very strange hitman known only to him as "Popeye." The shooter is Angela's paramour, Dillon, fresh off the boat from Dublin. Their plan is to acquire Fisher's fortune for themselves. The only problem is that Angela is no longer crazy about Dillon, and Dillon feels the same way about Angela. Dillon is without question a bad guy, but there's no one here who is truly likable --- except perhaps for Bobby Rosa, a redoubtable paraplegic who spends his days brooding bitterly over his past career as a criminal and surreptitiously taking photographs of women. Rosa's likeability is only made possible by the revelation of a soft side one would not expect. When he has the chance to blackmail Fisher, however, he jumps at the opportunity. Everyone in BUST is caught in a dark, swirling whirlpool that takes everything and gives nothing. This is a dark, gritty and inappropriately hilarious cautionary tale --- exquisitely conceived and flawlessly written --- about getting what you think you want and regretting it, and the endless consequences of evil deeds. BUST may have spoiled me for reading anything else for a while. I haven't had a book make me feel this entertained in such a warped fashion since I read DIG THAT CRAZY GRAVE by Richard Prather at the tender age of 10. But that's another story. For now, don't let another sun set without reading BUST. --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

Wow, I was blown away by this book. Going in, I wasn't sure what to expect because Starr and Bruen have such different voices. But the Publishers Weekly review puts it best--this is a seamless crime novel. It has a great characters, outstanding dialogue, and what a plot! There are many great twists and turns and toward the end I was turning the pages faster and faster because I just HAD to see what happened next. I've read a lot of great crime novels over the last several years, but this is one of the best. It's right up there with the best of Cain, Willeford, Leonard, etc. Highly recommended.

"Bobby came back from the supermarket and cooked himself dinner.... Even Def Leppard couldn't get him out of his funk. When the Def couldn't crank you, it was way past time to shoot someone." -- from Bust Often, two authors working together get in each other's way, cancelling out the individual contributions of each in favor of a homogeneous whole. But modern noir authors Ken Bruen and Jason Starr fit together like a married couple with complementary flaws -- all the pieces making a perfect jigsaw relationship, while still retaining those aspects that draw each author's particular cadre of followers. In the new Hard Case Crime offering, Bust, Bruen (who won the 2004 Shamus Award for The Guards and has another solo novel, Calibre, coming out this July) and Starr (2004 Barry Award winner for Tough Luck, with Lights Out coming in September) combine their dark talents to remarkable effect, resulting in a novel that is more than the sum of its participants. Bruen brings his skill at dark humor, downward-spiral characterization, and his familiarity with Irish culture, while Starr offers a simple yet familiar plot with plenty of opportunities for disaster, and characters with a tendency toward casual, unflinching violence. Put together, they make up an absolutely pitch-black novel that ranks with the best of their peers. That said, Bust was hard to get into at first -- I couldn't detect a consistent voice, as if the authors were writing alternating chapters (but perhaps they are merely writing alternating characters). Work your way past the first few chapters, though, and things smooth out and really get flowing. Max Fisher, CEO of NetWorld is having an affair with his Greek-Irish executive assistant, Angela Petrakos. Max wants his wife dead so he can marry Angela, and Angela's cousin knows a guy named Popeye who can do the job right. Trouble is, there is no cousin, and "Popeye" is actually Angela's boyfriend, Dillon, an Irish "Proveen" with an unpredictable streak. Meanwhile, Bobby Rosa, a wheelchair-bound ex-robber, is looking to get back into the game with his old pal, Victor, who has gone straight. When these stories come together, all hell breaks loose, and there's no guarantee who is going to come out with what, or even make it to the end with life intact. The limited third-person POV makes the events slightly distant yet still immediate enough to have stunning impact when several shocking events take place that even I, who have read all of the Hard Case Crime novels, could not have predicted. If you sit down with Bust, be ready to stay down for the duration. As a bonus (and a little unintended cross-marketing, perhaps), each chapter begins with a literary quote, like the Inspector Morse mysteries of Colin Dexter. Only these quotes are from other (mostly) modern crime thrillers, including one each from Bruen (The Hackman Blues) and Starr (Tough Luck) individually , as well as a few other Hard Case Crime authors like Allan Guthrie, Richar