The Max

This was a fun read. Max and all the characters are totally off the wall and that is the point. This is not a "serious" book, but one to laugh along with the improbable plot. I discovered this publisher by visiting the book store in Houston that gave it a start. So far, I have not been disappointed by any of the offerings. Try "Money Shot".

In the genre of comic crime novels, the undisputed master is Donald Westlake. Westlake, however, has been writing these books for over four decades, so eventually he will have to have a successor. Ken Bruen and Jason Starr are making their attempt to take that mantle with their books about Max Fisher and Angela Petrakos. The Max is the third book in this series and the first one I've read. The Max consists of several storylines that will take most of the book to converge. In the main storyline, Max Fisher is sent to prison for crimes he committed in previous novels. This middle-aged crook has an over-inflated sense of self-importance that makes it hard to grasp the gravity of his situation. Briefly a drug lord, he thinks that prison will be almost a vacation, but he doesn't get much respect, at least not until a rumor goes around about a certain mutilation he once did. Then he is King of the Cons, but he will still have enemies. Meanwhile, Angela, Max's beautiful ex-lover who is willing to prostitute herself for any worthwhile cause (as long as there's something in it for her) has fled to Greece where she takes up with Lee Child look-alike Sebastian. Sebastian is a con artist himself, leading to an edgy relationship that doesn't improve when Angela kills her sleazy landlord after a sexual assault and she makes Sebastian cover up the crime. Soon enough, he will ditch her and she will wind up in jail herself, where it will take her feminine wiles to break loose. A third storyline follows minor mystery writer Paula Segal who spends more time thinking about being a best-selling writer than actually doing anything about it. As her fiction flounders, she takes on a true crime assignment about Max's life, getting her tangled up with Fisher in the process. The Max is filled with characters that are unpleasant but somehow still somewhat likeable (or at least interesting). It is also designed for mystery fans: if you are unfamiliar with the genre, you may not get much of the humor which is filled with inside jokes. It's a fun enough book and I may go back and read its predecessors. Bruen and Starr may not (yet) be the new masters of comic crime fiction, but they are at least not out of the running.

Take a look at that cover. Try to imagine any possible way that the story inside could live up to that potential. Now imagine that the story inside not only meets that potential, but takes it out for filet mignon and escargot, takes it out dancing, seduces it tenderly and takes it home, then slashes its throat, straps its corpse the roof of the Packard and goes on a cross-country rampage, cackling all the way. After schooling the planet how to write darkly hilarious, black as 3 AM cop coffee world-class noir with BUST and SLIDE, Bruen and Starr blow the roof off with this one, which continues the deluded misadventures of businessman-turned-dealer Max Fisher, now doing time at Attica, and his ex-fiancee, the occasionally homicidal, insanely well-endowed, knocked-around-by-life and totally sympathetic Angela Petrakos. You can read the book for its jet-fuelled plot, which grabs you instantly by the throat on page one, or the characters, all of whom are as addictive as Max's crack habit and never fail to feel lived-in and totally real, even when (and sometimes especially when) they get wiped out mere pages after their introduction. Or you can read it for the uniquely jazzed up narrative voice that Bruen and Starr cook up between them like a couple of celebrity chefs ramped up on equal quantities of speed, ether and gunpowder, turned loose in a noir kitchen stuffed to the rafters with Irish whiskey and old Gold Medal paperbacks. When these guys get together, a kind of goofily instictive brilliance wafts off them like steam off the hood of a getaway car. Grab hold of this one and hold on -- it doesn't get any better.

I love this book. I was looking forward to it after discovering the two previous Max/Angela books by this writing team. The Ken Bruen/Jason Starr books are my favorite of all the Hard Case Crime Books, which is saying a lot because they are all great reads. I got this book in the mail and read it in a day. Filled with dark humor and hilarious characters, it is a very entertaining read. I highly recommended it.

Max Fisher and Angela Petrakis, anti-hero and anti-heroine of Hard Case Crime's delightfully depraved series of mis-adventures (previous titles: "Bust" and "Slide") penned by Jason Starr and Ken Bruen, return in "The Max." Max is a homicidal, crack and booze-addled nebbish whose self-delusion is so all-encompassing he manages, despite his odiferous personality, to be thoroughly amusing. Angela is a homicidal, herpes-carrying bombshell attracted to deranged, murderous losers, whose self-delusion matches Max's and who also manages to be thoroughly amusing. "The Max" finds Max locked up in Attica for a string of crimes committed in the previous two books. Angela is on the run in Greece. A few murders and delicious plot twists later, the pair reunites for a whopper of a bloody ending. Along the way New Yorker Starr, and Bruen (from Ireland) keep their hardbitten readers amused with fulsome detail in their lavish portrait of a real NYC putz, all punched up with a sharp, lyrical Irish brutality which the authors skillfully fold into Jewish Max and Greek Angela's personalities. The Max and Angela books read effortlessly, and not a single page turns without several depravities being given the unique Starr/Bruen twist. I thought I might get tired of Max and Angela after the first two episodes, and I hoped the authors would not try to beat more sales out of something that might have been better left in its original, pristine condition. But "The Max" continues the story in seamless fashion and its ending shows the authors to be fearless in laying out what I hope will be new, even more fertile ground for this highly entertaining, seriously deranged series.