This Wicked World

April 27, 2009
Set in L.A., Lange's visceral, hard-hitting first novel puts him squarely in the ring with the best young neo-noir writers. Jimmy Boone, a former Marine and ex-con lying low and waiting out his probation by tending bar on Hollywood Boulevard, gets drawn back onto dangerous ground after he agrees to help his bouncer buddy, Robo, look into the death of a young Guatemalan immigrant found covered in infected dog bites on an MTA bus. Boone and Robo get on a trail that leads from a ghetto dope pad, where they rescue an abused and toothless fighting dog, to a secluded desert compound near Twentynine Palms, where a psychotic crime boss, Taggert, hosts bloody dog-fighting contests. Boone soon finds himself in way over his head as he comes up against Taggert's crew of degenerates. While the book contains some familiar set pieces, Lange, the author of the story collection Dead Boys
, shows he has the potential to put his own distinctive mark on the mythology of Los Angeles.

May 8, 2009
Ex-con tries to keep straight in this hard-boiled first novel.

After he left the Marine Corps, Jimmy Boone turned his imposing physique and slightly violent temperament into a lucrative career as a bodyguard. After an unfortunate experience with a client, he ended up in Corcoran. Now, back on the outside, he's tending bar on Hollywood Boulevard and trying to stay out of trouble. But Lange's Los Angeles is built on the bones of Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles, so all it takes is the mysterious death of an illegal immigrant to draw Boone into an ugly world of drugs, dog fights and truly inventive parole violations. Lange displayed his mastery of short fiction with the story collection Dead Boys (2007), in which each brief narrative felt true and inevitable. This longer, more complex tale occasionally feels contrived. But the author more than makes up for the slightly creaky plot with his compelling characters. Even the minor players are fully-formed, and Lange manages to depict a little bit of L.A. with each one. Consider, for example, T.K.: His day job is doing dirty work for a sociopathic crime boss, but his dream is to star in a series of martial-arts-influenced fitness DVDs that will be bigger than Tae Bo.

Smartly entertaining noir, and a promise of better novels to come.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

May 1, 2009
Jimmy Boones life changed in an instant. An ex-Marine and a highly paid bodyguard, he assaulted his own clienthe had his reasonsand went to prison. Now out on parole, hes tending bar when the doorman asks for backup on a moonlighting gig: finding out what happened to illegal immigrant Oscar Rosales, who died of dog bites on a city bus. Against his better judgment, Boone proceeds pro bono, discovering a dogfighting ring where the people are more dangerous than the dogs, and putting the few people he cares about in mortal danger. Lange (Dead Boys, 2007) draws indelible characters and writes deadeye dialogue, and his L.A. is as parched and pitiless as the desert that surrounds it. But a book that starts out seeming destined to join the ranks of the great sun-bleached noirs ends with a ghost-town confrontation that isnt quite worthy of the tale that preceeded it and that produces a hopeful note that feels unearned. That said, This Wicked World is wickedly goodand we have a feeling that Lange is just getting started.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)