Slide (Max and Angela) Mass Market Paperback – March 29, 2011

Most of the funniest scenes in this book are too racy to quote in an Amazon review, but here is Max Fisher, crack dealer and legend in his own mind (he re-names himself The M. A. X.) living the high life (in more senses than one):He felt the munchies coming on fast and, thank God, Katsu brought out the spider rolls just in time.“Sorry about before,” Max said, going for a super smooth, jazz musician-type voice, like he was a DJ on [@#$%] Lite FM.“Katsu, I think you’re a really cool cat, man. I didn’t mean to frighten you or anything with that gun. That was just the crack talking, that wasn’t me. But I’m chill now, I’m real chill. So what do you think, man? We chill?”“Yes, we are chill,” Katsu said, and he bowed and returned to the kitchen.Max wolfed down the sushi—man, that was good s[tuff], but he was starting to get sick of it. He’d been having sushi three meals a day for, what, two months? It was classy food, but still.Meanwhile, Angela has moved to Ireland and found *yet another* psycho killer boyfriend, the eponymous Slide. Her funniest scene comes late in the book, and involves a pitcher of margaritas, a cockroach, and a rocket launcher; but the book is really Max's to the M.A.X.:It couldn’t’ve been, Max decided later. What the h*ll would she be doing in America, after all this time? Nah, it wasn’t her—it had to have been a hallucination. Or maybe it was just paranoia. Okay, okay, so now he was up to 10 out of 23 on that coke addiction test. Maybe he shouldn’t’ve ripped the thing up so quickly. The hallucination, or whatever it had been, reminded Max of how lonely he was. Yeah, he had Kyle around, but Max was physically lonely. Since Felicia had been killed there had been a big gap in Max’s life—well, two gaps, about the size of a pair of 44-double-E’s. The thing was, Max was a relationship guy. Without a loving, caring, big-[breast]ed woman at his side he felt incomplete. Yeah he was a metropolitan dude, but at heart he was a romantic, a one-woman man. Sure he played around, but no biggie, that was just for show, to impress the troops. But deep down he was a Paul Newman type really—one woman, one love. Damn straight and, hey, maybe he’d invent a salad dressing too. F---, the possibilities were, like, endless.Funny, violent, crass, depraved. I know I got to this a little late, but it is still a "classy" read.

This is the second volume in the Max and Angela tetralogy (Bust, Slide, The Max, Pimp). Where the first novel, Bust, introduced the characters, this is a transitional book. Max's computer network business has gone bellyup and Angela has left the country. Max is trying to become a major crack dealer and Angela has linked up with a ne'er-do-well in Ireland, named Slide. Slide's life goal is to set the record for serial killings and he is well on his way to achieving his goal. In the course of the novel he and Angela return to New York and find their way (in a manner I will not spoil) back into Max's life.The novel's genre and ethos are the same as in its predecessor: comic noir, ranging in humor and fecklessness somewhere between Elmore Leonard's light mood and Carl Hiassen's full-tilt standard. None of the characters are attractive or likeable but all are interesting. There is beaucoup violence but it is stylized violence, not lurid or upsetting violence. The pages fly by and we look forward to episode three: The Max.Mainstream novel readers will probably be appalled by what will strike them as racism, sexism, Islamaphobism (and other politically-incorrect –isms) but readers familiar with this genre will find its content fairly straightforward, familiar and, in its way, funny. Charles Manson is not funny, but an Irishman who aspires to be Charles Manson and finds himself in a convenience store that has no Guinness, no Jameson's, no Bushmill's, but only Coors Light, can be quite amusing.Yes, I look forward to reading The Max. I began with Pimp (a form of drug, not an occupation) and promptly ordered its three predecessors. Note that Pimp is different than the earlier novels; it is humorously 'literary', a self-reflexive tale in which a writer tries to turn Bust (the real-world history) into a book (though, as readers, we already know that there is such a book).Bottom line: clever, slapstick, over-the-top, but definitely not for all readers.

It was more by accident than by design that I've been reading Ken Bruen and Jason Starr's "Max Fisher" trilogy in reverse. First I read The Max, which may or may not be the final volume. I've yet to read the first novel, Bust. In the middle, there is Slide, the subject of this review.The main character in Slide is Max Fisher, who as the story begins, is in a bad situation. For some reason, the New York resident is in the middle of Alabama with no recollection as to how he got there (and no money either). Max is a middle-aged businessman who loves to live the fast life and is both blessed and cursed with an enormous ego. Convinced of his own invulnerability, Max gets into all sorts of trouble, but his egoism also gives him an almost delusional level of self-confidence that makes it seem like there's no situation he can't get out of.Sure enough, Max is soon back in New York and starting a new life as a crack dealer to the white collar set. He's living the gangster life (as he's picked up from the movies), complete with a live-in sushi chef and full-time prostitute. Unfortunately, he also has a cop out to get him (for reasons linked to the first book, Bust).Meanwhile, Max's ex-lover, Angela Petrakos has her own scams going in Ireland and becomes hooked up with an aspiring serial killer who wants to go to the U.S. to really become famous in his field. Max and Angela may be in almost two different plots, but you know they will intersect again by the end.Slide is another excellent work by Bruen and Starr, filled with dark humor and over-the-top characters. I wouldn't necessarily recommend reading these three books in reverse, but it does add a certain twist: I knew where Slide would wind up, but not how it would get there; indeed, the ride was as much fun as the eventual destination, a worthy standard for any novel.

Is there a genre called 'Panto-Noir'? With Slide and its predecessor, Bust, there ought to be! This is another foul-mouthed, sexed up, over the top tale of the irredeemably stupid, devious, self-obsessed Max and Angela. Separated following the events of the last novel, Max has decided to become a New York crack dealer to the super-rich and, in Dublin, Angela thinks she's found the ideal man (to sponge off) - except that he's a serial killer whose back garden is said to resemble a street in war-torn Iraq (the book is loaded with similar bad taste remarks!)The book sets out to be as offensive as possible. Every swearword and every combination of swearwords that can be used is used. Every racial cliché is chucked in: nothing and no one escapes the net of Jason Starr and Ken Bruen!I generally hate self-aware, postmodern writing, especially as the noir genre is the last great bastion of romanticism, and I feel as if I shouldn't like this book, but I couldn't stop laughing. It's a highly amusing, fast read - the second of a quartet and the third, The MAX, promises to be as demented!If you're easily offended, you won't be a Hard Case Crime reader anyway, but if you need a book that throws in as much sex, violence, bad language and tawdriness into a heady brew as possible and you're not worried about frequently cracking up laughing while on the train, this is the book for you. A Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster of a crime novel!Trash taken to the level of an art form. Recommended.

Slide is the middle volume in a contemporary noir trilogy by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr. The book picks up slightly after the events of Bust introduced us to the conniving businessman Max Fisher and his amoral girlfriend Angela Petrakos. Max begins the book in a bad (drunken, ruined) state, but soon bounces back - reinventing himself as a crack dealer for the upper class. Angela has fled to Ireland (with most of Max's money), but discovers that the Emerald Isle isn't all it is cracked up to be. After a few false starts, she winds up in the company of "The Slide" - an Irish serial killer that's obsessed with American culture.Slide reads more like parody than mystery. There's not much to "solve" or "detect" - the book is a collection of Max and Angela's (mostly unrelated) misadventures. That said, Slide is a very good parody. It is a collection of flawed and reprehensible individuals straight out of a Coen Brothers movie. The authors have a talent for creating memorable characters in a few short pages. No one in Slide is particularly intelligent (in fact, both Max and Angela are idiots) but the plot moves swiftly on legs of amusing contrivance and karmic revenge. The result still feels too goofy to be noir, but makes for an entertaining story. Also, the R.B. Farrell covers for this trilogy are simply amazing. I'd love the three of them as posters.

Der Nachfolger von " Bust (Hard Case Crime) " ist wieder ein Krimi, der nicht ganz ernst genommen werden will und trotzdem spannende Unterhaltung bietet. Er passt in keine der üblichen Schubladen, vielleicht könnte man das mit "Bust" und "Slide" kreierte Genre am besten als "New Pulp" beschreiben. Ein rasanter Plot mit schrägen, bis an den Rand der Parodie überzeichneten Charakteren, in dem es richtig zur Sache geht. Bust (Hard Case Crime)

So good. So funny.