Nothing Personal

Rating:
Summary: Noir at its best
Review: At thirty-five years old, Joey DePino worries about what the bookies and loan shark will do to him. However, Joey is more concerned about how his wife Maureen will react if she learns about his gambling debts. Frankie the bookie has already cut off Joey's credit and two thugs employed by Carlos the loan shark has cost him two stitches and bruised ribs. Joey also lost his job for lunching too long at OTB, but feels one more bet, perhaps the Pacers against the Magic will make things right.

Ad executive David Sussman was strutting just a week ago about his affair with employee Amy Lee. Now he panics that the obsessed Oriental will destroy his life. She threatens to call his wife if David fails to marry her and who knows what she will do to his daughter. David wonders how he will end his relationship with the troubled Amy. Maureen and Leslie have been friends since school, but soon their lives will intertwine through the actions of their spouses in a way neither could have predicted.

NOTHING PERSONAL is a dark urban noir that takes the audience into an amoral world where beating the rap is more important than accountability for one's activities. On the surface Joey and David seem like two radically different personalities, but they react to their crisis in similar ways, mostly not wanting it to reach their wives. The characters are fully drawn so that the audience understands the two couples even Amy's fatal attraction. Jason Starr lives up to his surname with this taut thriller that climaxes with an intriguing unexpected twist.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: Starr creates another nasty noir thriller!
Review: I can think of a lot of adjectives to describe Jason Starr's latest novel like: dark; disturbing; exciting; funny; crafty; thoughtful; and, depressing. My top two, however, are gripping and complex. It's gripping because you have, at most, 3 pages to relax, and then, if you don't want to ignore more important things than reading this book, you must be clinically obsessive-compulsive. It is complex because, once again Starr creates accurate portrayals of people we know and must both sympathize with as well as detest by the end of the story.

Starr's ability to peel away the superficial layers of sanity, sobriety and humanity that his protagonists hide behind, is disarming and terrifying. By the end of the story almost every character is both a predator and victim. The story is dark, cold, exciting and tense, but with enough "justice" such that you should be able to face your friends and neighbors again with a manageable amount of contempt.

If you like Brooklyn and New York settings you will probably love their portrayals here. Starr is able to accurately capture the ambience of two distinct worlds that lay side by side and constantly grind and bump with tension. Starr knows New York and presents it in a way that is inciteful but not overbearing.

Starr's story is always well plotted with an exceptional interweaving of two worlds that ultimately collide. At times, I was repulsed, scared, angry and excited by this unpredictable story.

As with his previous novel, Starr blends much of societies culturally chic obsessions and pathos with humor. He also seems to be able to accurately portray, even with some sympathy, the psychological traumas of chosen and popular lifestyles.

So...do you like noir? Do you like well written suspense? Do like dark, dark humor and enjoy twisted justice? If you can answer yes to any one of these questions, you'll love this book!

Rating:
Summary: Starr creates another nasty noir thriller!
Review: I can think of a lot of adjectives to describe Jason Starr's latest novel like: dark; disturbing; exciting; funny; crafty; thoughtful; and, depressing. My top two, however, are gripping and complex. It's gripping because you have, at most, 3 pages to relax, and then, if you don't want to ignore more important things than reading this book, you must be clinically obsessive-compulsive. It is complex because, once again Starr creates accurate portrayals of people we know and must both sympathize with as well as detest by the end of the story.

Starr's ability to peel away the superficial layers of sanity, sobriety and humanity that his protagonists hide behind, is disarming and terrifying. By the end of the story almost every character is both a predator and victim. The story is dark, cold, exciting and tense, but with enough "justice" such that you should be able to face your friends and neighbors again with a manageable amount of contempt.

If you like Brooklyn and New York settings you will probably love their portrayals here. Starr is able to accurately capture the ambience of two distinct worlds that lay side by side and constantly grind and bump with tension. Starr knows New York and presents it in a way that is inciteful but not overbearing.

Starr's story is always well plotted with an exceptional interweaving of two worlds that ultimately collide. At times, I was repulsed, scared, angry and excited by this unpredictable story.

As with his previous novel, Starr blends much of societies culturally chic obsessions and pathos with humor. He also seems to be able to accurately portray, even with some sympathy, the psychological traumas of chosen and popular lifestyles.

So...do you like noir? Do you like well written suspense? Do like dark, dark humor and enjoy twisted justice? If you can answer yes to any one of these questions, you'll love this book!

Rating:
Summary: Loved this book
Review: I did not find this book to have any positive message for the reader. All of the characters are so self absorbed that they care more about their personal wants then the needs of their spouses or children. This book propogates the belief that it is alright to live this way - because "everyone else does." Todays culture encourages people to read garbage like this in the guise that we will see the people suffer for their wrong doings, and therefore not act in these manners. But those that suffer are not the individual, but those that associate with them (or worse - those that are born to them).

I read books fairly quickly, and the suspense had a great deal to do with that, but I was disappointed with the bad taste the ending left in my mouth.

Usually in the mix of characters there is someone that the reader can side with (the protagonist), but if I knew any of these individuals I would choose not to associate with them. So why would I want to read a book about them?

Rating:
Summary: Good Modern Noir!
Review: I read Nothing Personal in about 4 hours on a plane ride home. I never expected to finish it so quickly, but, I couldn't stop turning the pages. Not only is this book very funny it is also deeply disturbing. Jason has a great way with dialect for making this feel like an edgy NY thriller.

Rating:
Summary: Good Modern Noir!
Review: I read Nothing Personal in about 4 hours on a plane ride home. I never expected to finish it so quickly, but, I couldn't stop turning the pages. Not only is this book very funny it is also deeply disturbing. Jason has a great way with dialect for making this feel like an edgy NY thriller.

Rating:
Summary: Jason Starr
Review: Starr comes through on the promise of his debut, Cold Caller. Tough, edgy characters and themes from the classic noir era are updated and brought into contemporary NYC. Starr is onto the underside of our Clinton-led, bull market era. Things aren't so clean or savory as we'd like to believe, and if greed is good, it can also twist the soul. Starr is one to keep an eye on, and I look forward to keeping up with him.

Rating:
Summary: Stupid people, behaving stupidly
Review: Starr's Nothing Personal is a pure crime novel, plain and simple. Less noir and more documentary, it describes the lives of two families, the DePinos and the Sussmans. Joey DePino is a working stiff with a major league gambling problem and a violent loanshark after him. His wife, Melissa, is disenchanted with her life, especially as she sees friends like Leslie Sussman get ahead. Leslie is married to David, an ad exec, and living in a ritzy Upper East Side apartment.

But David's life isn't all peaches and cream. A beautiful Asian co-worker, with whom he's had an affair, has turned psychopathic. As Joey struggles to pay off his debts and David grapples with an insane mistress, things go south in a hurry. And, typical of Starr's work, lives are lost in the process.

This is Starr's second book and, while not as cleverly plotted as Cold Caller, you'll get diabolical pleasure out of watching some stupid people do irrevocably stupid things. It's realistic, compelling stuff and Starr is a consistently entertaining author.

Rating:
Summary: A funny thing
Review: Start reading this and pretty soon, you won't be able to stop. It'll definitely start kicking in. Starr's characters in their desperate situations will start gnawing at you and before you know it, you'll be snagged but good. The characters in here have everyday problems and they take drastic measures to try getting out of them. This is noir, and it is great noir.

There are two guys with desperate situations. Number one: what am I gonna do about my 10-years-younger-than-me mistress who's threatening to blab to my wife unless I tell the mistress I love her? And the other guy--what am I gonna do about the nine grand
I owe the bookies and the loan shark? Kidnapping and a whole lot of even nastier stuff happen here. It ain't pretty, but it ain't spozed to be. This is noir.

Yeah, this is the real stuff. Check it out.

Rating:
Summary: A one night read for late night male New Yorkers
Review: Straightforward one night read, probably, say, maybe definitely male oriented(understatement), but really entertaining and a surprise find. Read it over a year ago, but since I've read follow up books wanted to plug this one as the best of his work.