Cold Caller: A White Collar Noir (Norton Paperback) [Paperback]

Jason Starr (Author)

Book Description

Series: Norton Paperback | Publication Date: May 17, 1998

A ravingly readable tale of a downwardly mobile yuppie who'll just kill to get ahead. Think Jim Thompson with an MBA.

Once Bill Moss was a rising VP at a topflight ad agency, but now he works as a "cold caller" at a telemarketing firm in the Times Square area. He's got a bad case of the urban blues. Still, he's good at his work and (he thinks) about to be promoted, when out of the blue he's fired. So Bill snaps . . . and the next thing he knows he has a dead supervisor on his hands and problems no career counselor can help him with.

In Cold Caller Jason Starr retools the James M. Cain novel of cynical suspense and murder for the fiber-optic age.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Starr's first novel is a lightly written story about the woes of Bill Moss, a once glitzy advertising executive in Manhattan who one day gets fired from his dream job. Living with his fianc?e and with a rent as high as the Empire State Building, Bill wastes no time and takes a temporary part-time job as a telemarketing rep for a down-and-out long-distance phone company. His boss has it in for him since Bill is the new "hotshot" that his boss never was. Between Bill's boss humiliating him day after day and his fianc?e pressuring him to get a "real job," it's easy to predict that something big, but not necessarily good, is about to happen. The story moves along rapidly, although the motivation for Bill's murder is not quite believable. In addition, Starr's characters are not very sympathetic. Still, patrons who liked Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho (LJ 1/91) will enjoy the dark humor.ABrent Newmoyer, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

In the two years since he got fired from his job as vice president at a New York ad agency, Bill Moss has made ends meet by a part-time telemarketing job for the grandly named American Communications Association. By day he forces himself to excel at the job he hates doing for penny-ante bosses (bureaucrats who could have stepped from the pages of Dilbert) whom he hates even more; each night he goes home to his girlfriend Julie, who wishes he would convert to Judaism; when their sex life goes into hibernation, Bill fantasizes about prostitutes. Most of the time, his bottled rage seems like nothing more than the psychopathology of everyday life, but a spectacularly unguarded remark at a dinner with two of Julie's stuffy college friends makes it obvious just how explosively he can act out. In fact, Bill is a disaster waiting to happen; it's only a matter of time before his murderous temper, whose eruptions he describes with disarming matter-of-factness, leads him to real murder. (Wait till you see who he kills.) The act leads him to a series of halfhearted attempts at concealment, and, inevitably, to a further spiral of violence before the postman rings twice in the highly appropriate ending. Starr's unsettlingly funny debut, running as hot and cold as Bill's moods, is just the thing for fans who miss the acid noir that Jim Thompson dispensed in The Grifters. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (May 17, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393317676
• ISBN-13: 978-0393317671
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,494,825 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

JASON STARR is the international bestselling author of many novels, including THE PACK which is out in hardcover and e-book from Berkley/Ace on June 7, 2011. Starr's other novels are COLD CALLER, NOTHING PERSONAL, FAKE I.D., HARD FEELINGS, TOUGH LUCK, TWISTED CITY, LIGHTS OUT, THE FOLLOWER and PANIC ATTACK. He has won the Anthony Award and the Barry Award and his books are published in more than a dozen languages. He has also co-written three novels with Ken Bruen--BUST, SLIDE, and THE MAX--and edited BLOODLINES, an anthology of horse racing stories for Vintage Books. He lives in Manhattan and is currently writing the sequel to THE PACK.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars If Jim Thompson were a Yuppie..., April 17, 2004

By 

D. Ross "http://directorblue.blogspot.com" (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Cold Caller: A White Collar Noir (Norton Paperback) (Paperback)

If Jim Thompson were a Yuppie, he might have written this book.

Bill Moss is a failed advertising exec living in Manhattan. Restarting his career as a telemarketer (for a lot less money), he and his co-workers are routinely humiliated by a petty and racist supervisor. But things get more tolerable for Moss when a chance lie he tells to the company's President results in a surprise promotion. Then he gathers enough courage to live out his long-time fantasy of an encounter with a 'lady of the evening'. Feeling guilty afterwards, Moss batters the woman.

Then, when his boss threatens to fire him over an unrelated manner, Moss snaps. Now he's got a dead body in his office and a bunch of violent p imps chasing him. And things go downhill from there.

_Cold Caller_ is a seductively easy read that has several exquisite plot points. If you liked Thompson's _The Killer Inside Me_, I can almost guarantee you'll think as I do about _Cold Caller_: it's deliciously good.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A quick and gripping read that is fun and scary!, August 23, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cold Caller: A White Collar Noir (Norton Paperback) (Paperback)

This is Jason Starr's first book and it's great. It's pure noir that keeps you trapped and wanting more, but makes you feel guilty about it. If you like New York and you don't like yuppies, you'll love the book. Like a good roller coaster ride I wanted to get off after the first drop but also wanted to know what was next. The main character Bill Moss is sympathetic and manipulative and the great fun for me was being duped by his warped sense of reality and justice. The fiendish acts unfold so quickly that by the time they are all done you feel like they make sense. Then after a while it just gets downright scary. I think this is good noir because the plot is both attractive and repulsive at the same time. I believed the story was plausible and that main character represents a good part of the dark side of many young, white, upwardly mobile men. It's a quick read that's gripping, unpredictable and disturbing. I'm definitely looking forward to the next book by Jason Starr.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars dark humor, July 9, 2004

By 

Matthew Arnold "author of The Shattered Silen... (Pacific Northwest USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cold Caller: A White Collar Noir (Norton Paperback) (Paperback)

This novel is at the same time humorous and dark, a good book in the tradition of Noir. Sort of a tamed down version of American Psycho. Follows the life of an ex ad executive into the world of telemarketing and NYC life. His temporary job as a telemarketer turns into a long term stint and when instead of getting promoted, he gets fired, well as the back of the book says "he snaps...now he's got a dead supervisor on his hands". The book is evenly divided between leading up to this, and events afterwards. A good ending awaits you...