The Max is a sequel to Slide, the first team-up for Ken Bruen and Jason Starr. Where Slide ends up, failed businessman and busted drug dealer Max Fisher was going to Attica and Angela Petrakos was fleeing to Greece from a murder charge. Neither of them likes what they're finding.
Max is going to get raped. Very hard. A lot. Angela is bored and broke and needs some excitement. A bored Angela gets in trouble very easily. And when trouble finally finds her, she ends up in an all-girl prison on the island of Lesbos. No, seriously. Ah, the wealth of same sex love in this book...
There's a novel proposal in The Max that gets shot down by every editor it's presented to with the same response: "story too dark, characters too unlikable." That's just Bruen and Starr breaking down the fourth wall for us. There's not a single likable person in this book. I think everybody has or contracts herpes and Angela has a mattress for a back. If I was fourteen, this would be the best book I ever read. You know what? I'm not fourteen and I still thought it rocked.
You can tell Bruen and Starr had a lot of laughs writing this book. As long as you remember it's for the most part tongue-in-cheek dark comedy noir you'll get the joke. Max (The M.A.X.) Fisher has to be the stupidest, most self-important, arrogant misogynist I've had the displeasure of running into in quite some time, and yet I find myself unable to stay away from him. I had to find out what happened to him next, what pit he dug himself into and I kept wondering why he couldn't just shut his mouth. But he's like your best friend who gets too vocal and belligerent when he drinks - you still stick by him because part of you always wants to be there to see what happens next.
If you like it dark, this one's for you. Check it out, buy it from the local bookstore or be like The M.A.X. and shoplift it if you have to, but it's a great way to kill an evening and it reads fine as a stand-alone, too. Bonus points for that.
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Publisher: Hard Case Crime (August 26, 2008)
ISBN-10: 0843959665
ISBN-13: 978-0843959666