Pimp

January 4, 2016
In Bruen and Starr’s scattershot fourth Max Fisher noir (after 2008’s The Max), a new designer drug called PIMP (an acronym for peyote, insulin, mescaline, and psychosis) is poised to give the ne’er-do-well New York City “businessman” (i.e., drug dealer) another shot at the big time. Since the first book in the series, 2006’s Bust, in which Max and his secretary, Angela Petrakos, plotted to kill his wife, Max has fallen on hard times, appearing after his plastic surgery “like Philip Seymour Hoffman after the autopsy.” Meanwhile, Angela has stumbled as well, making a living in porn. But she’s caught a break, too. In a metafictional twist, a movie of Bust is in heated development, and she’s determined to produce and star. The usual torrent of pop culture references (and relentless self-references) heap satire on filmmaking and crime writing as Bruen and Starr take a comic look back at their initial collaboration. Longtime fans may enjoy the 10th-anniversary antics, but new readers might want to start with Bust and work their way up.

January 1, 2016
A former drug kingpin stumbles on a new designer drug and uses it to fuel his comeback in the fourth entry of the Max Fisher series. Tending bar at an Irish saloon, Max finds a young dealer who has come up with a drug whose acronym is PIMP. Employing his usual sleazy means, Max takes control of distribution and is soon once more riding high. Meanwhile, Angela, the femme fatale who's dogged him through the series, is in Hollywood, angling to get a film made about her and Max. There's not so much a plot as there are a series of incidents on which the authors hang various wisecracks, inside jokes, and cutesy little nods to their pals in the crime fiction biz. Their idea of characterization is to have a Jamaican good-time gal end every sentence with "mon" or to have a French hood stand up for a woman's honor by killing her after she's been raped by a thug in his employ. The writing is for people who find the celebrity gossip on an average episode of TMZ too restrained. On the opening page, Max's face is compared to "Philip Seymour Hoffman after the autopsy." Hoffman is later identified as the actor who "got like an Oscar for playing a faggot." To be offended would be to take the authors' pathetic bait. We're told the name PIMP stands for the mixture of peyote, insulin, mescaline, and psychosis. Pulp, Idiocy, Snark, and Scumminess would have been a more truthful acronym.

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February 1, 2016
Some readers may want to pick this one up with tongs. After absorbing pages of f-bombs, s-words, and singers dying sitting on the toilet, they might cry, Enough! Others will realize you don't go to Hard Case Crime for gentility. And that's especially true of noir maestros Bruen and Starr, here combining for another over-the-top adventure starring former New York drug lord Max Fisher and his lover, Angela. Max has discovered PIMP, a drug like Ecstasy times four, and he peddles it in L.A. while Angela attempts to sell Max's colorful life story to the movies. It's reptile versus reptile, and some of the situations are downright funny. As when a Lee Child look-alike sets up a signing and forges Child's signature on Jack Reacher novels. For the rest, it's shootings, stabbings, eviscerations, and beheadings, all recounted in an oddly matter-of-fact manner so they seem like something on a movie screen. That's the key to the novel: life is just an imitation of the movies. That way, it's funny, making this perfect for those who like to laugh while the blood flows.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)