Nothing Personal by
Jason Starr
pbk out March 00
(No Exit Press)
at £6.99
This is the kind of book, you spend seven quid on it, and it goes so fast that the next day you have to go back round the bookshop and find something else to read.
Joey "The Jinx" DePino is well broke when his donkey is placed fourth in the last race at the Meadowlands, after a Stewards enquiry. He owes money to everyone, among them some very nasty loan-sharks who are not prepared to wait, and who employ unconventional methods to enforce repayment. But, ever resourceful, Joey soon comes up with a really sick plan that will help him to pay off his gambling debts.
At the same time, David Sussman, who thought he'd got rid of his young mistress, finds that she's threatening him and stalking his family.
Jason Starr's job is to use his tough, deadpan prose to lead us through the roller-coaster ride that is the collision course of his two main characters.
To do this he presents us with Joey's old school friend, Billy Balls, who has suffered a brain injury in a car crash. Billy Balls is distracted, he fades out in the middle of conversations, he is quick tempered and irrational, over sexed and violent, and he is absolutely essential in the sick plan that Joey has devised to get himself out of the hands of the loan-shark.
It has been suggested that Jason Starr is a worthy successor to Charles Willeford, and I must take issue with this. Starr writes well, and on the surface he covers the same kind of ground as Willeford. But he doesn't have the depth or breadth of the master, or the ability to instil a feeling of humanity in every single character. I really wish he did.
It must be said that there is no attempt here at social realism. The novel is a fantasy, and at least a couple of the characters are totally unbelievable. But the humour is there in good measure, and it is easy to find yourself with an echo of a laugh still resounding inside you when the stark and inevitably devastating conclusion is reached in the final chapter. I didn't mind being set up by the fine, polished prose of this writer.
(
John Baker
- author of the Sam Turner mysteries and one of Britain's most highly acclaimed writers)
Nothing Personal by
Jason Starr