The plot hangs together well, and there is a lot of side action taking place on the table as well. It’s Russo’s temptation to own 20 percent of a racehorse that really spurs the story on to the finish line. As everything falls apart around him, he becomes convinced that owning that horse will change his luck and his life.
The book is spare and lean, and the story is actually a small one, but Starr throws it at his readers like a vicious left hook that will leave the audience reeling, turning pages late into the night.
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Article comments
1 - Connie James
I'm afraid this one did not do it for me. I love hard case crime and most of the novels they've sent me have been fantastic. Authors I've already known and loved -- Spillaine, Westlake, Bloch, Block, Max Allen Collins, McBain and others -- and ones I was pleased to meet, like Rifken, Parker, Faust, Lange, Howard Hunt (who knew?) and others. I found Slide and The Max enjoyable, if not particularly appealing, and thought Jason Starr and Ken Bruenn did a good job creating characters who were sympathetic even as anti-protagonists. Not quite Elmore Leonard, but nobody is.
Having read "Fake I.D.," I have to give the lion's share of credit to Bruenn. For me, Russo did not resonate. He was not darkly intriguing; he was dull, pitiful and uncreative. I should have guessed there wasn't much to him when the gotcha! exerpt up front was an uninspired pocketbook raid that left no doubt as to the culprit. Given all the positive press Starr gets, I am willing to concede he is probably a talented writer but, for me at least, he phoned in this predictable clunker. Once I commit to a book, I feel compelled to finish it and it reminded me of the literary purgatory of Tami Hoag's "The Thin Dark Line." At least "Fake I.D." wasn't 592 pages.
Most readers seem to have really enjoyed it and I'm glad for them; I hope I catch the Starr fizz when I read another.