Fake ID
Jason Starr
No Exit pbk, 218 pgs, £6.99
Review by Gerald Houghton (2000)
The strapline for Jason Starr’s finely-tooled third novel has him "a worthy successor to Charles Willeford". He’s not. There is a losing streak to Tommy Russo, beaten-up as much by himself as life. But Tommy Russo sees a way through his dreams and what’s a little criminality in greasing the rails? No, Fake ID doesn’t front the dead-hearted misanthropy that runs through Willeford like rickets through an orphanage. Thirty-two and scarcely one of life’s beautiful losers, Tommy Russo splashed right out of the Jim Thompson gene-pool.
Tommy is a lot of things - bouncer in a Manhattan bar, resting actor, inveterate gambler and ladies man - but the only thing he’s good at is fucking up. Life keeps on with the breaks - the fatherly sympathy of Frank the aging bar owner, the love of a good woman - and Tommy keeps right on biting back. So when the offer of a seat at table of a race horse syndicate comes up he’s only too ready to fuck everyone over to park his butt. But once he’s under starter’s orders the lies turn to petty theft, theft to robbery, and robbery, inevitably, leads to murder.
The clean economy of Starr’s sly style initially belies its lean inevitability. Tommy’s voice is one of blithe optimism, even when he’s stumping up a fifth share in an unseen nag using the boss’ stolen cash or prowling Brooklyn in the dead of night with a corpse in the boot. Russo is conniving, guarded, smugly self-satisfied in best Jim Thompson tradition. Downfall is always a possibility, but never, it seems, an option that seriously dents his mindset. That you can see the end coming a mile off is surely no mistake on Starr’s part; Tommy Russo is no Tom Ripley. For Starr, like Thompson, the pleasure is in documenting the fall.