Customer Reviews

The Max (Hard Case Crime)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

When we last left Max Fisher (a.k.a., "The M.A.X.", New York's baddest hip-hop drug dealer), at the end of Slide, he was being led off to jail. Ken Bruen and Jason Starr's third collaboration -- not coincidentally titled The Max -- picks up with Max trying to get his bearings as the new little fish in a big pond. But Max still thinks like a CEO and knows how to play the game, and before too long, he is ruling the roost with the blacks, the Aryans, and the Latinos all thinking he's with them.

Enter Paula Segal, a midlist mystery writer just demoted to "cult" status ("She thought only those creepy noir guys got demoted to cult. She'd never even written a short story for Akashic"). She's looking to revive her career with a true-crime book about Max -- and hoping that the Edgar Award she'll undoubtedly win for it will help her meet her latest crush, Laura Lippman.

Meanwhile, Max's ex-fiancée, Angela Petrakos, has just arrived in Greece (she's of Irish-Greek descent and already tried Ireland, where she just didn't feel quite as Irish as she does in the states) and hooked up with a Brit named Sebastian. Not only does he have that accent, but he also looks just like Lee Child! (Too bad his idol is Tom Ripley.)

Readers of Bruen and Starr's previous books are already aware how much fun they like to have with real authors in their stories. Chapter 3 alone contains a great deal of inside information about the workings of the crime genre that even partially knowledgable fans will get a kick out of. After the disappointment that was Slide, I'm happy to say that The Max is a return to form for the duo, though they still seem to prefer "extreme" storytelling for its own sake.

On the downside, for the most part Paula Segal is a wasted opportunity. After a very intriguing introductory chapter, she is never used to her fullest potential -- even if she does quote Babe while pleasuring herself. The cover painting by Glen Orbik (Branded Woman, The Colorado Kid, Money Shot), however, is just the opposite. It is everything it wants to be. In fact, in some ways, it is even more successful in fulfilling its intentions than The Max is.

Despite the unevenness of the trilogy that began with Bust -- and signs point to it not becoming a tetralogy -- Ken Bruen and Jason Starr offer an original ride that is practically a genre unto itself. Here's hoping that these collaborations lead readers to the authors' separate works (though they write very different separately than they do together), or that they will decide to work together once again (and maybe give Paula her own book).

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.

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.

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.

If, like me, you've read with great pleasure the two previous books in this series "Bust " and "Slide", you will understand my excitement at finally getting my hands on this third book about Max (now calling himself "the M.A.X.") and his on and off again girlfriend Angela.

As in the previous books there is murder, foul language, betrayal, general mayhem, and more blood than can be found in a blood bank. To this list can now be added a prison riot at Attica, an all-female prison on the island of Lesbos, and angry Greeks seeking justice. There are also more than enough hysterically funny lines and situations, and also some "in jokes" that I didn't always get, but that didn't spoil my appreciation for the demented minds who wrote this story and its older siblings.

The names of famous thriller writers are tossed around constantly, and I can only hope that Laura Lippman and Lee Child consented to have themselves included in this book. To even attempt to give a logical plot line would be impossible without ruining the absolute fun of reading this book on your own.

It appears to be the potential end of the series, but I am hopeful that somehow the authors can continue their madcap romp through society with a cast of real whackos!

I've never understood how two people can co-author a work of fiction, and I've read a few that shouldn't have been written by either! Ken Bruen and Jason Starr, however, have mastered the team approach and seem able to craft these noir novels with ease. One must enjoy the darkness of their characters, and an interest in the Irish ethos is a real plus. If that's the case, an enjoyable read awaits. I only wish the books were longer.

This book is a joke. It is actually meant to be a joke. If you want a hardboiled noir, don't buy it. Mildly entertaining, thus 2 stars.

Classic pulp novels share a subtlety of language, and tension in plot, forged by writers better than the average writing for an audience that was smarter than average in a genre that pretended to be incredibly average. "The Max" has none of these qualities, relying on cursing for color and sex for humor and "wackiness ensues" as a plot driver.


Unless sophomoric humor really strikes you as hysterical, don't bother with this hack job. Read some of the most excellent re-printed real pulp. Robert Bloch, Paula Christian, whoever. But leave Bruen and Starr on the shelf.