Marilyn Stasio
Thomas Perry, that smiling sadist who gets his kicks from outfoxing readers, is at his wicked best in Strip. Like any self-respecting gangland thriller, this witty specimen has a cast of touchy mobsters killing one another over money and turf and petty grievances. But because a devious mind is manipulating the genre conventions—allowing unpredictable characters rather than precision-tooled action to drive his story—the rules of the game are constantly changing.
—The New York Times
Publishers Weekly
Half a dozen characters vie for primacy in this rambunctiously entertaining L.A. crime novel from Edgar-winner Perry (Runner). Aging strip-club owner Manco Kapak orders his boys to find the masked man who stole his cash receipts and take care of him. The boys settle on the wrong guy, L.A. newcomer Joe Carver, who decides to fight back. Jefferson Davis Falkins, the real thief, decides to continue to rob Kapak. LAPD Lt. Nick Slosser is mainly interested in keeping the peace—and keeping his two marriages a secret as well as figuring out how to pay for five kids at or nearing college age. Other meaty roles include Carrie Carr, who hooks up with Falkins and becomes a Bonnie Parker-like adrenaline junkie urging him to ever riskier deeds, and Spence, Kapak's trusted bodyguard and the only one smart enough to deal with Carver. Perry's exquisite timing and finesse provide near perfect endings to the multiple story lines and make this escapist reading at its best. (May)
Library Journal
Former bar owner Joe Carver has come to L.A. with a new identity and lots of cash only to find that thugs hired by low-level mobster Manco Kapak are out to get him. Carver has been mistakenly fingered as the person behind the armed robbery of Kapak's night deposit, a hefty sum used in part to launder drug profits, only the first of many hits the gangster will absorb from a masked gunman. Failing to clear his name, Carver counterattacks. Along the way, readers meet bigamist detective Nick Slosser, who is juggling the demands of two families and trying to capture the increasingly brazen robber while investigating Kapak for a drug lord's murder. As these and other colorful characters spiral around each other with gripping intensity and one startling twist after the other, the question is: Who's going down, and who's getting away? VERDICT Featuring rich, complex characters, Perry's 18th novel (after Runner) is pure, unadulterated fun, sure to please not only the many fans of this master craftsman but also lovers of imaginative, character-driven thrillers à la Elmore Leonard. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 1/10.]—Ron Terpening, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson
Kirkus Reviews
Perry (Fidelity, 2008, etc.) shows the cascade of lethal consequences following a strip-club owner's misidentification of the man who robbed him. Joe Carver came to Los Angeles with a lot of cash and a profligate determination to throw it around. That's why his name came up when Manco Kapak's thugs began asking questions about recent arrivals too dumb to realize that Kapak wasn't the ideal target to rob as he was making a bank deposit. Since Kapak is laundering money for the likes of drug lord Manuel Rogoso, he can't afford to look weak enough to let the suspect skate, even if he's decided that Carver isn't the ski-masked man who hijacked him. But Carver is not without resources of his own. When he can't persuade Kapak to drop the matter, he steals his company credit card and runs up $100,000 in charges. Enraged, Kapak mounts a full-court press against this unaccountable new enemy even as Rogoso is calculating whether to cut his ties to the ineffectual old man. The real robber, Jefferson Davis Falkins, has meanwhile hooked up with a lovely young sociopath considerably more risk-addicted than he is. Kapak's driver, Richard Spence, is thinking about turning independent. And Lt. Nick Slosser, the LAPD detective assigned to the case, is wondering where he can get the money to finance a delicate operation of his own. The first half of this shaggy, violent tale is a miracle of dead-eyed invention. It's only when the cast members start running out of options that the story starts running out of steam.
Publishers Weekly
Perry's darkly comedic yarn follows a Southern California strip club owner who makes a costly mistake when he blames the wrong man for robbing him. Michael Kramer clearly appreciates and plays along with the author's sense of humor, and he understands the characters' gray-area approach to morality: the voice of the sociopathic club owner is splendidly brutish most of the time, but can turn surprisingly tender in the presence of his new love. Kramer saves his strongest interpretations for the villains of the piece: the smarmy masked robber and his nutty girlfriend; the former's tone is silky smooth while on the job, but dissolves into nearly incoherent self-doubt when berated by the latter. The girlfriend's attitude devolves from flirtatious to, by novel's end, screeching and psychotic. The only flaw in Kramer's reading is his mispronunciation of a couple of Los Angeles' major street names--not the best thing for a book where the city is itself a character in the plot. A Houghton Mifflin Harcourt hardcover (Reviews, Mar. 1). (May)
From the Publisher
"Michael Kramer clearly appreciates and plays along with the author's sense of humor, and he understands the characters' gray-area approach to morality." —-Publishers Weekly Audio Review
