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THE DELIVERY MAN Chase
is an art-school graduate teaching in a high school in his home town,
Las Vegas, and passing time until he moves to New York or San Francisco
with his driven, African-American MBA girlfriend. He is part of
an upcoming group show and theoretically is working on pieces for the
show. There's a smirking, arrogant senior in his class who
profoundly annoys Chase-- a popular kid named Rush who drives a white
Escalade. One day Chase loses his temper and beats Rush up in the
hallway of the school. He's fired-- fortunate the boy doesn't
press charges-- and begins to drift back into the orbit of his own
friends from high school, with whom he shares a tragic past.
Low on cash, Chase starts driving his ex, Michele, to her appointments. Michele is not only a prostitute, but an entrepreneuer, working with their mutual friend Bailey to build an enterprise pimping high school girls, including Chase's former students. THE DELIVERY MAN is an update of the noir formula, combining the slow descent into criminality characteristic of pulp crime novels with a glossy hipness. It is a professional book about amateur professionals, written with an MFA's panache, a measured escalation of tension, and a well-deployed parallel-timeline technique. It is polished rather than passionate, but the sympathy McGinniss evokes for his disturbed and degenerate characters feels authentic. When I picked this one up, I hoped for a second that this might be Joe Innis writing under a pseudonym. Joe Innis' book ALSO RISING is a fiercely passionate novel. Unfortunately, it seems that ALSO RISING was one of those books that sank like a rock in the marketplace-- today it's available only as a POD reprint on line, but still, it's available. When an author's book sinks like that, they may as well change their name, because these days, they won't get another deal. So it didn't seem unreasonable to think Joe McGinniss Jr. might be a pseudonym. Now, I am fairly sure that they are entirely different people. THE DELIVERY MAN would be a good gift for someone who likes a Jim Thompson or James M. Cain. If they like it you can get them ALSO RISING too. --C. B. Coble |