Customer Reviews

Slide

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Following up where Bust leaves off, Slide is a rollicking good time ride with two of the main protagonists from the first book; Max Fisher, a hustler so driven he hustles himself first, and Angela Petrakos, a VERY calculating accomplice. They are joined by a plethora for characters who are well writ and capture the zeitgeist of a culture shot through with drugs, absolute worship of money, and the worst excesses of popular culture.

There are so many great lines in this book. Bruen has always been good at the throwaway gem, but Starr seems to have kicked him up to a whole new level. Dozens of times in the book Max starts to get a clue that maybe he isn't quite as a) appealing to women, b) controlled in his use of drugs, or c) quite the criminal mastermind he conceives himself to be. But then with a wonderful turn of phrase he dismissed any self doubt and jumps back in on his own Teflon chuted sleigh ride to hell. Only George Pelecanos does these wry asides as well, although Starr/Breun's drip with sarcasm as opposed to the irony of Pelecanos. But then, the authors are on very different missions with their works.

Of course, there has to be another protagonist and Starr and Bruen introduced Slide, a captivating, totally amoral psychopath who has delusional problems of his own.

The plot that ensues is just this side of far fetched, just this side of madcap, and a heck of a lot of fun. I read this book on a 6 hour flight from Newark to San Francisco, and laughed for the whole three hours it took to read.

So it is a lot of fun, but if you step back and think about it, it takes damn good writers to publish something this tightly plotted, this economical with words, and this ironic. Not only a great read, but also a very well constructed work.

If you read this, you must read Bust first, or you will miss a lot of the plot.

There is no publisher more hard-boiled than Hard Case Crime. And there is no author combination more hard-boiled than Ken Bruen and Jason Starr. These gentlemen, through the auspices of Hard Case, blessed the reading world in 2006 with BUST, a seamless collaboration that was as dark, outrageous and hilarious --- sometimes within the same sentence --- as anything within recent memory. They have seen fit to produce a repeat performance in 2007, which fulfills the anticipation created by its predecessor.

The erstwhile couple at the nexus of BUST makes a return visit in SLIDE, even though they embark on this wild night's ride on separate continents. Max Fisher begins SLIDE at the end of a roaring drug- and alcohol-fueled ride that deposits him in... No, I'm not going to tell you, because half the fun is finding out along with Max. Let's just say that Max is in the United States, about as down as he can get in the one place in the country he is least likely to be. Angela Petrakos, meanwhile, is in Dublin, Ireland --- by choice and with eyes wide open --- but she is gradually reaching the end of her tether.

Max digs himself out of his hole by returning to sales, his natural vocation. He was selling computers in BUST; in SLIDE, he...well, let's just say he is not performing that function anymore but is fulfilling a need nonetheless. And before you know it, he is living high and behind the high cotton back in New York. Angela does what she does best, and naturally she hooks up with a really twisted, demented chap named Slide, who wants to become a serial killer on the order of Dahmer, Bundy and Gacy. Slide is up to 13 by the time they meet. When circumstances require that they flee the Emerald Isle, New York of course is where they want to be. Max is also in the Big Apple, and, well, it's just a small town, isn't it? By the time all is said and done, the crosses are doubled and tripled; one will walk away, one will be led away and one will be carried away. The other half of the fun I mentioned earlier is finding out who.

What makes SLIDE a great book, of course, is the frenetic combination of Bruen and Starr, who write as if conjoined at the brain. Starr is a master at digging and probing into the molecules of the mortar that cements relationships for bad or worse, while Bruen's ability to bring a stygian humor to the worst of humanity's most malevolent foibles is unsurpassed. Put them together in a room, and just like the back jacket says, SLIDE may be the most shocking book you'll ever read. It may also be one of the best.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

If you love Ken Bruen and Jason Starr like I do (even though I thought Starr's latest was disappointing), this is for you. You can crank this one out in a couple of hours. Never mind that the plot doesn't make much sense. That's not the point. This is all about memorable characters and terrific prose. The action is fast and furious and none of the main characters have any redeeming values. The subject matter is money, drugs and, stangely enough, looking for love in all of the wrong places. This is the second outing for Angela and Max (Read "Bust" by the same authors)and hopefully we haven't heard the last from them. If you like tasting the grit in your reading, don't mind ultra-violence and having some laughs along the way, this is for you.

this book is fun and violent--violent in not just the sense of blood and guts, and trust me, there.s still p l e n t y of that to go around, but violent in the sense of pace and dialogue being breakneck and the character interactions being the kind of honest most people would kill to be able to be; fun in the sense that there are terrible things going on but you can.t keep the laughs from coming.
this is the kind of book that inspires horrible minds to strive for the higher reach. this is the kind of book that gives comfort with hilarious failings. this is the kind of book that saves.
so yeah, you should give it a shot...

Slide is the middle volume in a contemporary noir trilogy by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr. The book picks up slightly after the events of Bust introduced us to the conniving businessman Max Fisher and his amoral girlfriend Angela Petrakos. Max begins the book in a bad (drunken, ruined) state, but soon bounces back - reinventing himself as a crack dealer for the upper class. Angela has fled to Ireland (with most of Max's money), but discovers that the Emerald Isle isn't all it is cracked up to be. After a few false starts, she winds up in the company of "The Slide" - an Irish serial killer that's obsessed with American culture.

Slide reads more like parody than mystery. There's not much to "solve" or "detect" - the book is a collection of Max and Angela's (mostly unrelated) misadventures. That said, Slide is a very good parody. It is a collection of flawed and reprehensible individuals straight out of a Coen Brothers movie. The authors have a talent for creating memorable characters in a few short pages. No one in Slide is particularly intelligent (in fact, both Max and Angela are idiots) but the plot moves swiftly on legs of amusing contrivance and karmic revenge. The result still feels too goofy to be noir, but makes for an entertaining story. Also, the R.B. Farrell covers for this trilogy are simply amazing. I'd love the three of them as posters.

All three books of this series do not fall short of expectations. Not the ideal lecture for the very sensitive reader, they provide for lots of tension and laughter - some of the funniest (and strangest) characters in fiction.

Warning: Slide Slide by Ken Bruen, Jason Starr is not for the faint of heart and you'll love it. Totally well written and fun to read. I received a copy as a gift. The story is tight and is a continuation from the first book "Bust." (Also a great book that is worthy of 5 stars). Slide is about a crazy serial killer who calls himself by that name and naturally, gets mixed up with Max aka "the Max" Fischer and his erstwhile sidekick, the beautiful and cunning Angela Petrakos. It's a roller-coaster ride as this bizzare triangle unfolds and the bodies start to drop. Some of the most colorful characters ever. Great dark humor abounds. Enjoy~!

Ken Bruen is one of my favorite authors and when my son gave me this book, I was quite pleased. Having devoured it in one day, I'm very glad to have gotten it. This is a roller coaster ride of a book, funny, foul, serious and just a great way to spend some time.

The two authors are obviously having a great bit of fun in this writing. That's obvious when one of the very minor characters appears to be modeled after Ken Bruen, in a short but hilarious scene. All of the folks in this book are well drawn, and they all have their own funny ways, even though some of them have tragic ends. I laughed out loud as I kept turning the pages, and every so often I had to bother my wife and son with listening to some of the tremendous lines. The sequence of sentences about Riverdance just cracked me up, and them also!

I'd never heard of this series of books (Hard Case Crime) before, but i certainly intend to make acquiring them a priority in my house, so that all of us can read these tales, and laugh ourselves silly!

It was more by accident than by design that I've been reading Ken Bruen and Jason Starr's "Max Fisher" trilogy in reverse. First I read The Max, which may or may not be the final volume. I've yet to read the first novel, Bust. In the middle, there is Slide, the subject of this review.

The main character in Slide is Max Fisher, who as the story begins, is in a bad situation. For some reason, the New York resident is in the middle of Alabama with no recollection as to how he got there (and no money either). Max is a middle-aged businessman who loves to live the fast life and is both blessed and cursed with an enormous ego. Convinced of his own invulnerability, Max gets into all sorts of trouble, but his egoism also gives him an almost delusional level of self-confidence that makes it seem like there's no situation he can't get out of.

Sure enough, Max is soon back in New York and starting a new life as a crack dealer to the white collar set. He's living the gangster life (as he's picked up from the movies), complete with a live-in sushi chef and full-time prostitute. Unfortunately, he also has a cop out to get him (for reasons linked to the first book, Bust).

Meanwhile, Max's ex-lover, Angela Petrakos has her own scams going in Ireland and becomes hooked up with an aspiring serial killer who wants to go to the U.S. to really become famous in his field. Max and Angela may be in almost two different plots, but you know they will intersect again by the end.

Slide is another excellent work by Bruen and Starr, filled with dark humor and over-the-top characters. I wouldn't necessarily recommend reading these three books in reverse, but it does add a certain twist: I knew where Slide would wind up, but not how it would get there; indeed, the ride was as much fun as the eventual destination, a worthy standard for any novel.

This was a very welcome diversion. I was able to finish it in a few hours.