I'm coming to that age now where all the pop culture from my formative years is resurfacing in new and sometimes alarming guises, (you see the overhaul Teen Wolf is getting? Doubtless, a Team-Jacob inspired cash grab - and hey, go for it, nothing sacred about that franchise, I mean it was old when it was new to kids in the '80s and I don't remember anybody pitching a fit over Michael J. Fox or Justin Bateman not living up to Michael Landon in I Was a Teenage Werewolf.) But what's strange and interesting to witness about these recycled projects is the cross-pollinations that creep up, and were I a cynic, I'd be tempted to call Jason Starr's latest, The Pack, the Lost Boys / Mr. Mom hybrid, which is a combo I'm not sure anybody knew they were looking for. Trust me, you were. You just didn't know it.

Simon is having a bad week. He's suddenly lost his job, had to swallow his pride, fire his nanny and become his young son's full time care taker while his wife wins the bread. They're scaling back their Manhattan lifestyle to avoid having to (gasp) move to a more affordable area and Simon is feeling the weight of primary parenting, the subtle ways his wife's resentments creep up in their interactions and the self-loathing of the laid off professional, until a bright spot appears on his schedule. He finds a group of fathers of young boys who get together daily at a particular park and suddenly things don't seem so grim. His son is making friends and Simon has found support and role models for how he wants to do this. These guys are the titular pack that he begins to run with. Literally. 

Simon begins to run every day. He also changes his diet drastically, takes care of his body and image like never before. He starts spending so much time with his new best buds that even though their sex life has taken a recent quantum leap forward, Simon's wife begins to suspect that he might be gay. She knows that something unusual is going on, but she is not ready for the truth. Maybe won't ever be. When Simon's former boss is savagely murdered, he becomes a person of interest to the police and stitching together an alibi is more problematic than he'd like it to be.

I was a little unsure how to write about this book because I picked it up having nothing but Starr's name to recommend it to me. I'm a big fan of his style, and his usual fare is tar-black urban noir, so easy to read (his simple, straight-forward prose contains no fire-works, and is about the most effortless page-turning you're likely to experience any given year) that even as his characters' lives inevitably derail and begin to pick up speed toward really nasty destinations, you'll breeze right through their ruination before you've even thought about applying the brakes. Starr wrote it, I knew I wanted to read it, that's all. I gave not a second thought to what I assumed were big furry metaphors gracing the groovy cover and I certainly didn't read the description or plot summaries available before opening the book, which starts off like many of his tend to with the stresses of modern life chewing up a marriage and a career. The characters were quickly suggested downhill and I sucked on an iced summer beverage and settled in for a chilly treat. It wasn't until maybe fifty(?) pages in that I started to wonder if it was headed where it seemed to be. 

It was. 

And in retrospect, I should've known. I mean, he dipped into this type of territory last year with his first graphic novel, The Chill, and if you're reading this at all, you've already put together what I had no clue about going in, but I still can't quite bring myself to spell it out for the spoiler-shy reader. It's a great premise and once I'd caught on to where I being taken, the possibilities began to present themselves to my imagination in rapid-fire bursts that nearly distracted me from the actual words on the page, and even now as the book is long finished, I want to pursue the further storylines of this world. 

Herein lies my slight frustration with the book. It felt like the origin episode or back story of a longer series. I didn't feel that it really exploited all the interesting consequences of the protagonist's dilemma. Maybe this is the first of a new series, but outside the Max and Angela trilogy co-authored with Ken Bruen, Starr hasn't seemed interested in continuing sagas. Once I was clued in - and really, I was probably later than any of you will be - I wanted it to take off, but actually, nothing much happens till a murder occurs about 100 pages in and the cops aren't really zeroing in on our hero for another hundred or so, (though, like I said earlier, Starr's prose really races even if the plot isn't). 

There are some great details dropped about the complications these characters face. Plenty of sex and humor and just odd interactions to enjoy along the way, but the part of the story I'm most interested in is yet to come. Which may be a back-handed compliment, but I really would like to see another book featuring the surviving cast. Now that we're grounded in the world, I'd like the chance to really explore it.

If you're not familiar with Starr yet, you probably will be soon. Academy favorite David Fincher, (The Social Network and the upcoming adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) is sniffing around Panic Attack and Brett Easton Ellis is adapting The Follower as a TV show.

Jedidiah Ayres writes fiction and keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland.