Headlock
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
"A powerful debut novel" following two cousins on a dangerous road trip from New York to Las Vegas (Booklist, starred review).
Odessa Rose is the kind of guy who gives the term "hair-trigger temper" a whole new meaning. His violent nature has, more than once, produced blood. Dess was a college wrestling star who blew it all just shy of graduation when he lost a match and beat another wrestler to a pulp. Since his inglorious dismissal from college, he's been parking cars for a living in downtown New York.
It's there that his cousin Gary finds him and lures him away to Las Vegas. Gary has some uncontrollable impulses of his own: hugely overweight, he's a compulsive gambler, playing fast and loose with thousands of dollars. But now there's an enforcer tailing him, a sunglasses-wearing thug who has no trouble breaking hands, arms, legs. Gary needs protection in Vegas. Who better than his strong, volatile cousin Dess?
What do you do when you're at a crossroads in life? When you want to be a different person than the one who's made all the wrong choices? When your strength has become your greatest weakness? Headlock is "a brutal and potent debut novel . . . A grim, suspenseful drama to the end" (Valley Advocate).
"Odessa Rose has a violent temper and a wrestler's strength, both inherited from his Russian immigrant grandfather, having skipped the generation of his father the economics professor . . . Gary's uncontrolled appetites and Dess's uncontrolled anger add to the tension of the trip, which is really about self-examination and redemption. The cousins struggle with the Rose family legend of a grandfather who fought hard and worked hard for the sake of the family, a family from which they are alienated. A powerful debut novel with fascinating characters." —Booklist, starred review
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Twin addictions overlap in Berlin's noir, on-the-road debut novel. Odessa Rose, the narrator, has become something of a serial assaulter, attacking men in bars in New York City. When the reader first meets "Dess," he's parking cars in a garage in the Big Apple. He went to college on a wrestling scholarship, but his behavior there was dicey: after losing a wrestling match, he publicly battered his opponent with a chair and was nearly expelled. Dess's father is an academic. His younger brother, Derek, is the one making A's at Harvard while Dess is the family "failure." But then there's his cousin, Gary, a 400-pound gambler. Gary doesn't eat; he binges. Yet Dess's obese relative seems the instrument of his release when Gary asks Dess to accompany him as he drives his Jaguar to Las Vegas. Dess's boss at the parking lot refuses to give him time off, so Dess beats the man, then sets out with Gary on a cross-country tour. Eventually, Gary's motive for requesting Dess's company is revealed: Gary owes $100,000 in gambling debts, and he's going to be popped if he doesn't come up with the cash. When they reach Las Vegas, Dess helps Gary "count cards" at the blackjack table. Things veer out of control when a hit man with blue sunglasses shows up. Although the trajectory of Dess and Gary's plight is a little too predictably Hollywood, Berlin displays a nice, quirky sense of dialogue, and his violent scenes are etched with convincing--if sometimes gruesome--detail. Author tour.
