Joe Hustle: A Novel

(Hardback)

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Description

Joe Hustle has never had much luck-but things start looking up when he meets an intriguing new woman and scores a rare windfall. Can he outrun disaster long enough to turn things around

Joe Hustle is a survivor. A Gulf War vet and ex-con always one stumble away from catastrophe, he manages to scrape together enough money from various jobs to eke out a precarious existence on the darker fringes of Los Angeles. When he meets Emily, the black-sheep daughter of a wealthy family, the two spark an instant connection-she seems like the best thing to happen to him in a while.

But their whirlwind romance is put to the test when what starts out as a simple favor for a friend leaves Joe homeless, unemployed, and on the wrong side of a vengeful drug dealer. An impulsive offer to go on a road trip with Emily promises to take them out of harm's way-but may only lead to more chaos.

Part hard-boiled love story, part thriller, part portrait of a tormented yet resilient soul, Joe Hustle ratchets up the tension as it rockets from the after-hours clubs and dive bars of the mean streets of L.A. to the mansions of the Hollywood Hills and, finally, to the desolate highways of the Southwest. What emerges is a gritty portrait of a man who may be down but can never be counted out.

Reviews

"As he spends his life cycling through odd jobs and making questionable life choices, veteran Joe Hustle's main credo is 'don't die.' A wonderfully bittersweet and darkly humorous tale, Richard Lange's Joe Hustle is part love story and part recorded memoir of a man whose main goal is to just make it through life alive. Hard to put down and easy to get lost in."--David Swinson, author of The Second Girl and Sweet Thing
"Lean and mean. Hard-boiled and hard-hitting. Gritty and noir-y and full of hangdog heart. That's what this piping hot serving of Angeleno crime fiction is. Richard Lange's Joe Hustle crawls under your skin and stays there till the last page."
--Gregg Hurwitz, NYT-bestselling author of Lone Wolf and the Orphan X novels
Praise for Richard Lange's Rovers:
"A swift, delicious novel that's firing on all cylinders . . . The book has a lot going on, with as many settings as characters, propelled by the jet fuel of resentments, assassinations-for-hire, mistakes, and love affairs . . . There are a few amazing fights too . . . Lange balances it all perfectly."--Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles Times
"Lange has done it again! Another tour de force! Another gripping page-turner! Shifting points-of-view, beautiful language, drama, action, fantasy, pathos--Rovers has it all! And it makes me feel greedy like a vampire (or a rover): I want and need another Richard Lange book right away! Well, I have to be patient and rational: I have his other books to reread and this one, too, which is an utter triumph and delight."--Jonathan Ames, author of A Man Named Doll and creator of HBO's Bored to Death
"Outstanding supernatural noir . . . Evocative prose illuminates the neon-lit world of small-town 1970s America. Lange succeeds brilliantly at combining the vampire and noir traditions."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Rovers is a lean, mean pulp masterpiece of American horror. I was blown away. Richard Lange is the real deal."--Joe Hill, author of Locke & Key and Nos4a2
"Want a book that will scare the daylights out of you this weekend Rovers, by Richard Lange. The best vampire novel I've read since Let the Right One In."--Stephen King (on Twitter)

Author Bio

Richard Lange is the author of the story collections Dead Boys and Sweet Nothing and the novels This Wicked World, Angel Baby, The Smack, and Rovers. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the International Association of Crime Writers' Hammett Prize, a Crime Writers' Association Dagger Award, and the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Los Angeles.