Looking For a Good Book

I’ve written before about how important it is for me to “like” the characters in a book. That doesn’t necessarily mean they have to be nice people, but I usually need to find something about them that makes me want to spend time with them. Bust, by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr, puts that idea to the test because there are a whole lot of people in this book that I absolutely would not want to spend any time with.

In fact, Bust is filled with some of the most filthy, dirty, slimy people you’re likely to find in a book. They lie, cheat, steal, plot, scheme and generally do some pretty awful things. The language and conversations can be just as dirty as the characters. And yet, I really enjoyed this book.

The story is a classic noir setup: Max Fisher wants his wife dead and, with the help of his mistress, sets about finding someone to do the job. Of course, things don’t go according to plan. Actually, they go wrong in so many different ways that watching the characters try to recover from one bad decision after another becomes much of the fun.

What I particularly enjoyed was the way Bruen and Starr have captured the feel of an older era of noir and pulp fiction. There’s something wonderfully trashy about it, but it’s also very deliberate. The characters are exaggerated, the situations get increasingly ridiculous, and yet the story keeps moving along at a terrific pace.

And while I certainly wouldn’t want to know any of these people in real life, I did enjoy getting to know them on the page. They are well-crafted characters, even when they are completely despicable. I may not want to be their friend—or even meet them—but I certainly enjoyed watching them get what they had coming to them.

Looking for a good book? Bust, by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr, isn’t a book for everyone. But if you enjoy hard-boiled noir, pulp fiction, dark humor and characters who are spectacularly bad at making good decisions, you may find it as much fun as I did.

This book is part of the Supermax: The Max and Angela Trilogy which I received, in digital format, from the publisher, through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review. 

4 stars

* * * * * *

BUST

authors: Ken Bruen and Jason Starr

series: Max & Angela #1

publisher: Hard Case Crime

ISBN: 9780857683106

paperback, 254 pages