A review by rosseroo
The Smack by Richard Lange
4.0
I'd previously read some of Lange's short stories about down-and-out no hopers working dead-end jobs in and around LA, and thought that his style might work better in a novel, and so I picked this up. It's a very well-executed crime story about a middle-aged grifter down to his last $5,000 when he hears a tall tale from an old family friend about a $2 million score.
Readers who require a "likable" protagonist are unlikely to enjoy Rowan Petty, who has a kind of personal code he follows, but is a scam artist with no real human connections. Hence a ridiculous plot contrivance that makes his seeking out the $2 million plausible and worth our rooting for. Along the way he teams up with a hooker who doesn't exactly have a heart of gold, but she's not too far away from that trope and serves as another narrative mechanism for balancing Petty's character.
The story revolves around Petty trying to find the money in East LA and get it into his hands safely. That doesn't work out so well, because naturally there are other folks after the money, and they don't mind a few dead bodies along the way. There's a whole moderately cheesy subplot about Petty's estranged daughter, but at the heart of the book is a very tightly plotted crime story. There's not really any humor to it, and I could see a very self-serious director like Michael Mann making a fine movie out of it.
Readers who require a "likable" protagonist are unlikely to enjoy Rowan Petty, who has a kind of personal code he follows, but is a scam artist with no real human connections. Hence a ridiculous plot contrivance that makes his seeking out the $2 million plausible and worth our rooting for. Along the way he teams up with a hooker who doesn't exactly have a heart of gold, but she's not too far away from that trope and serves as another narrative mechanism for balancing Petty's character.
The story revolves around Petty trying to find the money in East LA and get it into his hands safely. That doesn't work out so well, because naturally there are other folks after the money, and they don't mind a few dead bodies along the way. There's a whole moderately cheesy subplot about Petty's estranged daughter, but at the heart of the book is a very tightly plotted crime story. There's not really any humor to it, and I could see a very self-serious director like Michael Mann making a fine movie out of it.