This Is The Stuff

I just finished reading Jason Starr’s most recent novel, The Follower.

The past decade has seen a great groundswell, a great revitalization, of the noir/pulp/dark crime tale – call it what you like – and, for me, Jason Starr was, and is, at the forefront of it.

His third novel, Hard Feelings, was the first contemporary novel published by Black Lizard (as an imprint of Vintage).

I was working in a bookstore the day it was released, and I carried a copy around the store with me, just so I could sneak glances at the cover.

It was a dangerous-looking motherfucker.

Black Lizard was where I turned when I gave myself a break from being that guy at the bookstore who dutifully read Infinite Jest, Lorrie Moore, and that hot new translation of The Man Without Qualities.

When that guy finally gets around to writing something, that guy told himself, how could it help but be an important doorstop of American Lit?

But, privately, I really wanted to write like Patricia Highsmith.

It was too bad nobody published books like hers anymore.

The mystery section was filled with historical mysteries and techno-thrillers. Black Lizards were the exception, but they were all reprints, thirty years old, older.

Until now.

Not that it would matter, if Starr didn’t have the stuff.

Jason Starr has the stuff. He’s Highsmith with a Blackberry.

And with Lights Out and The Follower, he’s now in hardcover, smuggling his noir sensibilities into mainstream suspense fiction.

--to be cont.--