Awards
2004 Barry Award Winner
2004 Anthony Award Nominee for Best Paperback Original
Synopses & Reviews
Mickey Prada's a nice kid. He works hard at a neighborhood seafood market in Brooklyn putting fish on ice. He's got a nice girlfriend. He even delayed college a year, to help his sick dad. But Mickey's got a problem. A customer at the fish store, Angelo Santoro, keeps asking Mickey to place bets for him and Angelo keeps losing. As Angelo gets further in the hole, his bad luck is turning out to be Mickey's too.
Now Mickey's got his bookie after him and Angelo's showing him the butt of his pistol rather than paying him back. So when his best friend, Chris, asks Mickey to join him on a can't-lose caper, Mickey decides to go along. But, surefire schemes often have a way of backfiring, and this one is sending Mickey into an uncharted part of Brooklyn, where fish like Chris and Mickey have trouble just staying alive.
Review
"The pressure keeps on building as Mickey struggles cluelessly for a way back to his dream of a happy life as a CPA. Starr piles on the misery relentlessly in his latest black-on-black entry." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"[B]y the time Starr gets through with him, Mickey is toast a thief, a suspected killer, and a stalker in the making. Tough luck, indeed. It could easily have turned into melodrama, but Starr has total control of his plot, and he's so relentlessly clever that poor Mickey's life becomes a mesmerizing exercise in personal decline in which every piece smartly falls into place. An unsettling read, but hard to put down." Stephanie Zvirin, Booklist
Review
"Starr moves deftly through his milieu, twisting expectations and producing a grim comedy, something that may surprise...those who know him for his earlier, more straightforward Jim Thompson-style lowlife crime novels." Publishers Weekly
About the Author
Jason Starr is the author of Cold Caller, Nothing Personal, Fake I.D. and Hard Feelings. He lives with his wife and daughter in New York City.