Strip

Thomas Perry's gripping story recounts a cascading series of events that follow the armed robbery of a strip club owner. It's a fascinating story in which no one is innocent. The main characters are bad with streaks of goodness--or at least enough substance to make the listener relate to them. Joe Carver is the person wrongly accused of the robbery, but he's nobody's fall guy. Narrator Michael Kramer's authoritarian voice brooks no foolishness as he delivers characterizations that are fresh and real. Each man or woman's distinct personality comes through fully, and he even evokes a bit of sympathy for the villain, Manco Kapak. The combination of Perry's strong writing and Kramer's solid performance carries listeners into a seedy world of strippers, hoods, cops, and tough guys. M.S. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

June 28, 2010
Perry's darkly comedic yarn follows a Southern California strip club owner who makes a costly mistake when he blames the wrong man for robbing him. Michael Kramer clearly appreciates and plays along with the author's sense of humor, and he understands the characters' gray-area approach to morality: the voice of the sociopathic club owner is splendidly brutish most of the time, but can turn surprisingly tender in the presence of his new love. Kramer saves his strongest interpretations for the villains of the piece: the smarmy masked robber and his nutty girlfriend; the former's tone is silky smooth while on the job, but dissolves into nearly incoherent self-doubt when berated by the latter. The girlfriend's attitude devolves from flirtatious to, by novel's end, screeching and psychotic. The only flaw in Kramer's reading is his mispronunciation of a couple of Los Angeles' major street names—not the best thing for a book where the city is itself a character in the plot. A Houghton Mifflin Harcourt hardcover (Reviews, Mar. 1).

Starred review from March 1, 2010
Half a dozen characters vie for primacy in this rambunctiously entertaining L.A. crime novel from Edgar-winner Perry (Runner
). Aging strip-club owner Manco Kapak orders his boys to find the masked man who stole his cash receipts and take care of him. The boys settle on the wrong guy, L.A. newcomer Joe Carver, who decides to fight back. Jefferson Davis Falkins, the real thief, decides to continue to rob Kapak. LAPD Lt. Nick Slosser is mainly interested in keeping the peace—and keeping his two marriages a secret as well as figuring out how to pay for five kids at or nearing college age. Other meaty roles include Carrie Carr, who hooks up with Falkins and becomes a Bonnie Parker–like adrenaline junkie urging him to ever riskier deeds, and Spence, Kapak's trusted bodyguard and the only one smart enough to deal with Carver. Perry's exquisite timing and finesse provide near perfect endings to the multiple story lines and make this escapist reading at its best.