Slide

In this hilariously twisted sequel to Bust, fugitive Angel Petrakos hooks up with a serial killer in Ireland, while her ex-lover and partner, Max Fisher, a failed New York businessman, reinvents himself as a crack dealer. Original.

Bruen and Starr follow up last year's Bust with another dark, twisted, no-holds-barred tale that hits all the noir buttons and then some. Since he was betrayed by his mistress/former assistant, Angela Petrakos, who left him with nothing to his name but a bad case of herpes, New York businessman Max Fisher has been on a drunken downward spiral. When Max, waking up in Alabama, meets bumpkin Kyle Jordan, a hotel clerk and local crack cocaine dealer, he sees his chance to get back on top. Using Kyle's Colombian suppliers, Max begins selling crack to his old business associates. Soon, this Scarface wannabe has a luxurious Manhattan penthouse and is calling himself The M.A.X. Meanwhile, Angela's got a new boyfriend, an Irish psychopath named Slide (life's ambition: to become history's greatest serial killer), and she isn't done with Max. As this warped cast of characters cross and recross paths, events violent, bloody, crude and hilarious unfold at a rapid, almost stream-of-consciousness pace. Though this pitch-black comedy isn't for everyone, those with a taste for it will have as much fun reading this novel as the authors obviously had writing it. (Oct.)
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Bruen and Starr have concocted a wild, remarkably vulgar, and very funny ode to mindless violence, drugs, down-and-dirty sex, and self-delusion. Most of the violence comes courtesy of the title character. Slide is a handsome young Irish psychopath whose life goal is joining the pantheon of American serial killers: Dahmer, Bundy, Berkowitz, . . . Slide. The drugs and self-delusion are the essence of Max Fisher, a silly little git whose first hit from a crack pipe turns him into The M.A.X., a hip-hop gangsta crack dealer and legend in his own mind. The connection between the two men is sexy Angela Petrakos. Angela just wants a house in the suburbs and a couple of kids, but her otherworldly bad tastes in men keeps betraying her. She was once Max's fiancée. Now she's Slide's squeeze, and you just know she's going to bring these two bizarros together. There's good reason to believe Bruen and Starr had as much fun writing Slide as crime fans will have reading it. Gaughan, Thomas