Book Review: Nothing Personal

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

Nothing Personal     Amazon US TPB Amazon Canada TPB
Jason Starr
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Noir
Four Walls Eight windows, May 2000, $14.00, 256 pp.

At thirty-five years old, Joey DePino worries about what the bookies and loan shark will do to him. However, Joey is more concerned about how his wife Maureen will react if she learns about his gambling debts. Frankie the bookie has already cut off Joey’s credit and two thugs employed by Carlos the loan shark has cost him two stitches and bruised ribs. Joey also lost his job for lunching too long at OTB, but feels one more bet, perhaps the Pacers against the Magic will make things right.

Ad executive David Sussman was strutting just a week ago about his affair with employee Amy Lee. Now he panics that the obsessed Oriental will destroy his life. She threatens to call his wife if David fails to marry her and who knows what she will do to his daughter. David wonders how he will end his relationship with the troubled Amy. Maureen and Leslie have been friends since school, but soon their lives will intertwine through the actions of their spouses in a way neither could have predicted.

NOTHING PERSONAL is a dark urban noir that takes the audience into an amoral world where beating the rap is more important than accountability for one’s activities. On the surface Joey and David seem like two radically different personalities, but they react to their crisis in similar ways, mostly not wanting it to reach their wives. The characters are fully drawn so that the audience understands the two couples even Amy’s fatal attraction. Jason Starr lives up to his surname with this taut thriller that climaxes with an intriguing unexpected twist.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner

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