The Price You Pay

May 14, 2018
The jaded and callous worldview of Londoner Jack Price, the narrator of this unpleasant crime novel from the pseudonymous Truhen, is evident from the opening sentence: “I’m ordering a latte macchiato because Didi is dead and that is sad.” Price eventually discloses that his downstairs neighbor was shot twice in the chest and once in the head, as if she were a drug mule, before revealing that he himself is a drug dealer who’s proud of his business model—outsourcing deliveries of narcotics as cutting-edge “zero-hour gig-economy microjobs.” Price feels motivated to investigate the killing on his own, to defend his territory, and isn’t deterred when three thugs arrive at his apartment to beat him up, or even after learning that a scary group known as the Seven Demons may have been involved. Price’s smart-alecky comments and penchant for awkward comparisons (“She looks like Didi Fraser if Didi had lived without makeup and eaten raw bear from the moment she gave up the nipple”) will put off some readers. Those looking for an amusingly snarky antihero lead will be better off with serial killer Dexter Morgan. Agent: Patrick Walsh, PEW Literary.

May 1, 2018
A coke dealer pisses off the wrong guy and winds up with seven psychotic killers on his trail.The beauty of a pseudonym is that it allows a writer to start over, unburdened from the preconceptions of their previous work (looking at you Robert Galbraith and Benjamin Black). Here, a previously published writer offers a blistering fast, rat-a-tat urban thriller starring a fast-tongued white-collar criminal who might be crazy. Jack Price is a relative nobody who deals high-end coke to anyone who can afford it. Things go awry when someone clips Jack's downstairs neighbor, an old lady named Didi, and then sends some goons around to beat him up. Technically, there's a plot here somewhere--something involving a rich do-gooder named Sean Harper and an Icelandic dark web portal called Poltergeist--but it's really just window dressing to set a gang of assassins called Seven Demons on Jack's ass. But Jack, though sweet on his lawyer, Sarah, is homicidally crafty in his own way, for instance, keeping a crazy homeless man locked in a warehouse wearing clothes covered in knives, you know, just in case. Or buying a bunch of competing cocaine, cutting it with anthrax, and then slinging it back into circulation. Or shooting his own dirty cop for nothing more than expedience: "We hug. And then I shoot him in the face. Small caliber goes phht and one of his eyes goes red and that's it. Sorry not sorry." Jack's fast-paced, expletive-heavy monologue works overtime as he faces down his foes one by one, among them a street fighter, his own enforcer, a shadowy sniper, and a preternaturally gifted, semipsychotic sex doctor who practices her own dark arts on Jack. The book is more Looney Tunes than criminal noir, but it's an entertaining trifle, piquant with its Tarantino-light aesthetics and a narrative voice that recalls early Charlie Huston.A clever little slice of gun fu, powered on popcorn and airplane-glue fumes.

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May 1, 2018
Didi, the mean old lady downstairs from Jack Price, is dead. Murdered. Cops in his building aren't good for business, as Jack is a high-end, high-tech coke dealer. Who was this lady who got herself killed, Jack wonders, and starts asking around about Didi. Before you can say beatdown, Jack is sporting a broken nose and multiple cracked ribs. Then he learns that there's a contract on his life, and it's been given to the Seven Demons. Jack is offended. The Demons are more appropriate for Eastern European dictators, not small-business men. Still, Jack understands the stakes. He either takes out the Demons or he's dead. As the Demons come after him, Jack heads off the radar to buy some time. And come they do. Jack isn't a tough guy like Jack Reacher, but he's inventive and entirely self-serving. He'll sacrifice any friend or acquaintance to live another day. There's as much stream of consciousness in Jack's narration as there is straight-ahead noir, but that's much of the appeal, at least for readers looking for more than a linear, good guy-bad guy whodunit. Give this to anyone who knows Roger Hobbs' brilliant Ghostman (2013).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)