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Summary
Summary
"Jason Starr is hypnotically good." -Lee Child
When Simon Burns is fired from his job without warning, he takes on the role of stay-at-home dad for his three-year-old son. But his reluctance pushes his already strained marriage to the limit. In the nestled playgrounds of the Upper West Side, Simon harbors a simmering rage at his boss's betrayal.
Things take a turn when he meets a tight-knit trio of dads at the playground. They are different from other men Simon has met, stronger and more confident, more at ease with the darker side of life- and soon Simon is lured into their mix. But after a guys' night out gets frighteningly out of hand, Simon feels himself sliding into a new nightmarish reality.
As he experiences disturbing changes in his body and his perceptions, he starts to suspect that when the guys welcomed him to their "pack," they were talking about much more than male bonding. And as he falls prey to his basest instincts, Simon must accept that werewolves exist if he is to turn the tides of his fortune...
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Author Notes
Jason Starr is the author of many previous novels and has won the Anthony Award and the Barry Award.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Manhattan receives a lustrous varnish of black, black humor in this sly urban fantasy thriller from crime author Starr (Panic Attack). When ad man Simon Burns suddenly gets the axe, his wife, Alison, looks on the bright side. Now Simon can become the perfect stay-at-home dad for their three-year-old son. Exploring playground options outside his Upper West Side neighborhood, Simon meets dads Charlie, Ramon, and the strangely sinister Michael, and their toddler sons in downtown Battery Park. Handsome Michael, with his Germanic accent and gothic HQ in a rundown Brooklyn brewery, is without doubt the leader of the pack-a pack with which Simon soon starts running to his peril. The quirky Alison has a wonderful way of suggesting one thing to Simon then going back on the idea, time after time. Meanwhile, desperate single Olivia Becker gets more than she bargained for after picking up Michael in a midtown bar. Starr once again shows a real gift for satiric humor and capturing the contemporary New York scene. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Well-intentioned family man Simon Burns goes to work thinking he has the inside track on a promotion, but he leaves unemployed. Overnight, Simon is a stay-at-home dad for three-year-old Jeremy. He's overmatched until he meets Michael, Charlie, and Ramon, dads watching their boys playing in a Manhattan park. The guys are good fathers, they're engaging, and they welcome Simon and Jeremy into the group. They also invite Simon to a guys' night out, and things get weird; Simon awakens naked in some woods in New Jersey, and he soon learns that the man who fired him has been mauled to death, apparently by a wolf. He also discovers a new craving for red meat and physical exertion, heightened senses of hearing and smell, and a ravenous sex drive. Starr, best known for noirish crime novels and hilariously over-the top collaborations with Ken Bruen, went supernatural with The Chill (2009). This time it's werewolves. Although Simon's evolution from dispirited metrosexual to predator is well done, crime purists may conclude that The Pack is best left to the vampire-zombie crowd.--Gaughan, Thoma. Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
It's almost summer, so let's get serious about those vacation reading lists. On second thought, let's save the 600-page historical sagas and thickly plotted espionage thrillers for another day and kick back with something weird and wonderful - like a supernatural mystery. Michael Koryta, who previously staked out that territory with "So Cold the River" and "The Cypress House," takes it to loftier elevations with THE RIDGE (Little, Brown, $24.99), a freshly imagined and elegantly constructed variation on the dead-of-night ghost story. Set in an abandoned mining region in the foothills of rural Kentucky and drawing deeply on Koryta's affinity for spooky places, this eerie tale hinges on a chapter of local history forgotten by all but Wyatt French, an eccentric old coot who lives alone in a lighthouse he built in the woods to keep the dark away. "So if you got a light, hold it high for me/ I need it bad tonight, hold it high for me," goes a sad poem hanging over his bed. French becomes unhinged and commits suicide when a wildlife sanctuary for lions, tigers and other "massive, uneasy cats" moves into this remote area, intruding on his solitude and awakening nightmarish notions that something wicked is living up on Blade Ridge. But before he kills himself, the old man passes on his forebodings to two of Sawyer County's presumably more stable citizens, Chief Deputy Kevin Kimble, who is hopelessly in love with a woman currently doing time for killing her brutal husband (and taking a shot at Kevin), and Roy Darmus, who lost his job as the county's official storyteller when the regional newspaper shut down. Although their sleuthing efforts establish a realistic baseline for the novel's supernatural events, readers are swept along by Koryta's narrative voice, which is surprisingly soft and low and poetically insinuating, considering the horrors he's relating. The presence of the great cats threatens the spirits of the woods, which are "heavy with the feel of magic." And when a preternaturally powerful black cougar named Ira jumps the fence to take up the watch on these haunted hills, the scene is set for a battle that will either restore the balance of nature or plunge the whole region into darkness. Not to tip the ending of this extraordinarily imaginative story, but I'd put my money on Ira. Demonic possession, the provocative topic of Justin Evans's first novel, "A Good and Happy Child," takes on a literary twist and a sexual jolt in THE WHITE DEVIL (Harper, $24.99) when a wayward American teenager named Andrew Taylor is shipped off to Harrow, the elite English boarding school where Lord Byron sowed some of his wild oats. Evans starkly conveys the alienation felt by Andrew in this classbound foreign culture. Although far from a personable youth, Andrew finds his prospects brightening when his housemaster, a "drunk and useless" poet flailing away at a play commissioned by the school's governors, takes note of the boy's Byronic features and casts him in the role of that notoriously dissolute Harrovian. Evans heaps an assortment of gothic embellishments onto this coming-of-age narrative, probing the mystery of how Byron's sexual adventures at Harrow might have contributed to his literary maturation. The secret room with "the lustrous atmosphere of physical desire so overwhelming as to be sickening" is a bit over the top. But the pale, wan ghost who quotes poetry and takes possession of Andrew, showing him how Byron's romantic betrayal drove him to murder, offers about as much excitement as any 17-year-old might hope to experience during his senior year abroad. Guys' Night Out takes on a droll new meaning in THE PACK (Ace Books, $25.95), a glibly amusing fantasy in which Jason Starr invites wimpy men to reclaim their masculinity by turning into werewolves. Sweet, spineless Simon Burns is the ideal candidate for one of these hairy makeovers. Having lost his New York advertising job in a humiliating office coup and allowed his emasculating wife to railroad him into the role of stay-at-home dad, Simon falls right in with a group of cool fathers he meets in the playground at Battery Park. While not unduly alarmed to see one of his new pals eating a bloody steak with his bare hands, Simon is considerably more upset when he finds himself wandering naked in the New Jersey suburb where his ex-boss has just been murdered. "He had no survival skills," Starr writes of this urban animal turning on his literary spit. "He was a New Yorker, for God's sake." Like Jason Starr, Sara Gran made her bones writing urban noir, and she hasn't exactly given up the genre. The dead-eyed face of post-Katrina New Orleans that stares out from CLAIRE DEWITT AND THE CITY OF THE DEAD (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $24) is every bit as raw as the battered mug she drew of 1950s Brooklyn in "Dope." But hope is on the way in the exotic person of Claire DeWitt, a supremely confident detective who reads the clues she finds in dreams, the I Ching and scraps of garbage that float up from the street. Called back to New Orleans, where she trained under an even more bizarre psychic sleuth, to find a beloved local character who disappeared in the aftermath of the hurricane, Claire prowls the darkest corners of the city, eyes wide open to the suffering and despair of its shell-shocked residents. Claire is a charmer, but there's nothing cute about her paranormal visions of a city living in torment. Michael Koryta's novel, set in an abandoned mining region, draws on his affinity for spooky places.
Library Journal Review
Ex-advertising executive Simon is having trouble making the transition to being a stay-at-home dad when he meets a group of fathers and their sons at a park. He quickly becomes part of their clique until a night of dinner and drinks with the guys leads to Simon waking up naked and covered in blood. In the days to come he notices an increase in his speed and stamina, a ravenous appetite for meat, an amped up sensitivity to smells, and a high sexual appetite. He vows to stay away from these guys, but when faced with the unsettling physical changes, he must go to them for answers. As the book title implies, Simon has done more than make a few new friends; he has been selected to join their pack. VERDICT In this tightly written werewolf suspense thriller, crime writer Starr (The Chill) succeeds in keeping readers on the edge of their seats. The book brings werewolves to the streets of New York City and manages to seem completely believable. A great read; recommended for any paranormal suspense fan.-Amanda Scott, Cambridge Springs P.L., PA (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
