Hard Feelings
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- $95.00
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- $95.00
Descripción editorial
From the Anthony Award–winning author of The Follower and Panic Attack comes a dark psychological noir novel of obsession, paranoia, and revenge.
At thirty-four, Richie Segal's life is quietly unraveling. His career has stalled, his marriage is strained, and his confidence is eroding as his wife's success only sharpens his sense of failure. He's drinking again. He's suspicious. And he can't stop replaying old humiliations from his past.
Chief among them: Michael Rudnick, the neighborhood bully who terrorized Richie when he was thirteen.
When Richie unexpectedly runs into Rudnick years later, buried resentments resurface and something inside him shifts. For the first time, Richie feels a sense of control he's never known before—and he begins to believe that confronting the past might finally fix the present.
Instead, it sets him on a path toward consequences he cannot escape.
In the dark tradition of Jim Thompson and James M. Cain, Hard Feelings is a psychologically driven crime novel that explores masculinity, resentment, and the dangerous fantasies that take hold when an ordinary man is pushed too far.
BONUS CONTENT
This edition includes bonus chapters from Jason Starr's novels Twisted City and Tough Luck.
PRAISE FOR HARD FEELINGS
"Clean, cold and extremely chilling." - Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review
"Perverse as she was, I think Patricia Highsmith would approve…Hard Feelings does a nearly faultless job of building tension and following Richie's descent into a world that resembles the one in which he has previously lived, in the same way a grimace resembles a grin." - Otto Penzler
"Jason Starr is the first writer of his generation to convincingly update the modern crime novel by giving it provocative new spins." - Bret Easton Ellis
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Computer systems salesman Richie Segal knows things are bad, but he has no clue how bad they can get in this effectively bleak successor to the noir tradition of Jim Thompson and David Goodis. Problems with his job, problems with his marriage suddenly seem of no consequence when he encounters his childhood neighbor, Michael Rudnick, walking down the street in New York. The sighting of Rudnick, now a prosperous lawyer, triggers a flood of repressed memories that begin to haunt Richie in every aspect of his life. What did Rudnick do to him in the basement rec room when he was just a kid? And what should he do to Rudnick now? Starr (Nothing Personal; Cold Caller) does a fine job nailing down his cast of vacuous yuppies, digital-age counterparts to the unsympathetic characters populating the paperback original novels of the 1950s. While Starr works his material well, wedding a modern understanding of repressed memories to a doomful noir scenario, as well as escalating the action with a consistent hand, he never manages a brilliant Thompsonesque leap completely over the top the angle that made Thompson such fun. Still, those looking for an uplifting read will find themselves trapped like rats between the wrong set of covers, as fans of noir bump into another author who can bring them down and cut loose with a savage kick to the ribs. FYI:This novel is the first paperback original to appear under the Black Lizard imprint.
