September 24, 2007
Sex, lies, crushed dreams and slot machines are paramount in McGinniss's flashy, fast-moving debut. Chase is a struggling artist who couldn't hack NYU and moves back to Vegas, where he is reunited with his adolescent flame, Michele. After being fired from his teaching job for beating up a student, Chase plans to hook up with his girlfriend, Julia, in California, but instead spends his summer as a chauffeur for Michele's call-girl business. Michele has plans for herself (buying a house, getting an advanced degree in women's studies), but for the time being is running the call-girl service out of a suite in the Versailles Palace Hotel and Casino with her boyfriend, Bailey. Girls too young for the job, readily available cocaine, untrustworthy business partners, memories of a family tragedy and glammed-out Vegas goons make Chase's summer more stressful than he had hoped for as he attempts to finish a few paintings for a group gallery show. The novel is action-packed, though the character development—particularly with the women—is sometimes superficial. McGinniss (son of another Joe McGinnis you may have heard of) successfully gambles with the notion that whatever happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but what does that mean for Chase and his plans to escape?
October 15, 2007
A few chapters into this debut novel, readers are so inundated by repeated references to drug use, prostitution, and sudden violence that the cryptic but vivid introduction is nearly forgotten: Chase, recovering from four unexplained reconstructive surgeries, is holed up in a suite at the Palace Hotel in Las Vegas. He's in love with his childhood friend, Michele, who has hatched a plan with her spoiled boyfriend/pimp, Bailey, to clear a cool $200,000 in one summer by running a call-girl service. Chase, a once-promising artist now fearing failure by age 30, falls into work as a chauffeur for Michele and her teenage employees. Events rapidly sink toward total degradation. Mentor Bret Easton Ellis's influence is apparent, although McGinniss's protagonists are modern members of the lower middle class rather than the affluent and bored of the 1980s. Despite Ellis's alleged hand in getting this work published, it stands on its own. Buy where Charles Bukowski and Hunter S. Thompson have a readership. [Film rights have been optioned to Whitsett Hill Entertainment; the author is the son of Joe McGinniss, whose latest true crime book, "Never Enough", will be reviewed in "LJ" 11/15/07.Ed.]Christine Perkins, Burlington P.L., WA
Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
November 1, 2007
This debut novelfrom the son of the famed true-crime reporter is a searing portrait of young wastrels adrift in a vacuous Las Vegas. Chase couldnt cut it as an NYU art student and now finds himself mired in old, self-destructive patterns. Fired from his high-school teaching job following a fistfight with one of his students, he falls into a job chauffeuring a ring of teenage call girls toclients homes. The ring is run byanold friend, an acquisitiveSalvadoran immigrant who longs to buy a home in one of the ubiquitous new housing developments springing up in the desert. Although Chase is engaged to an ambitious business gradstudent and is himself struggling to finish a group of paintings for a gallery opening, he findshis sense of purposedraining away.Unsavory business partners and old vendettas sooncome into fast and furious play. McGinniss never wavers from his ruthless portrayal of the morally bankrupt, andsome readers may be put off by the unlikable characters, but this atmospheric page-turnergains increasing depth as it barrels towarda gut-wrenching conclusion.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)