Point Doom

by Dan Fante

Overview

From Dan Fante, the son of novelist John Fante, comes a gritty detective novel featuring JD Fiorella, an ex-private investigator who's bent on avenging his friend's murder.

Failed private investigator JD Fiorella was a pro at finding trouble. Mixing it up with the wrong people in New York, he escaped to L.A.—only to hit rock-bottom after too many nightmares and too much booze.

Now forty-six and sober, JD is working hard to get it together. Living in Malibu at his mother's house in Point Dume, he's got a new job selling used cars with his friend Woody and a new girlfriend. But just as things are looking up, JD discovers a gruesome murder. Now the ex-private detective has to make a choice.

Determined to exact vengeance, he follows a twisting trail of clues that leads him to unexpected truths about himself and his new life—and to a psychopathic killer with an eerie connection to his past. And, as JD soon learns, this time there's no easy way out.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062229014
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/28/2013
Series:	P.S. Series
Pages:	353
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Dan Fante is the author of the memoir Fante, the novels 86'd, Chump Change, Mooch, and Spitting Off Tall Buildings, and several books of poetry, short stories, and plays. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and son.

What People are Saying About This

Jerry Stahl

“A powerful read from a writer who’s lived what he writes and writes what he lived, 86’d stands out as yet another example of Fante’s unique voice and bottoms-up, scraped-off-the-sidewalk prose.”

Editorial Reviews

In this hard-edged he-man action novel from Fante (Mooch), one-time private eye James “JD” Fiorella, a 44-year-old alcoholic living with his mother in Point Dume in Malibu, Calif., crosses paths with a serial killer—a nemesis trained as a child in sadism by Nazis in the death camps, no less. Fante, the son of novelist John Fante, ambles quirkily toward the showdown with side trips to AA meetings and JD landing a job as a car salesman, plus a grotesque incidental highlight when the ex-PI steals a severed penis from a crime scene. Whiny and unlikable, JD is full of bluster. Of a thug who’s threatened his mother, he says, “I’ll kill his bodyguards and I’ll kill his dogs. I’ll kill everybody I see.” Yet somehow one suspects JD just might not be up to the task. Fans of regulation crime novels will likely find the action unfocused, even blurry, but readers on the lookout for the unusual have got their summer read. Agent: David Hale Smith, Inkwell Management. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Dan Fante: “This writer has the telemarketer’s skill for keeping the mooch on the line: readers who don’t hang up right away very likely won’t be able to stop listening.” — New York Times

“A powerful read from a writer who’s lived what he writes and writes what he lived, 86’d stands out as yet another example of Fante’s unique voice and bottoms-up, scraped-off-the-sidewalk prose.” — Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight

“Told in a free-flowing narrative style that features a number of memorable characters, Fante’s novel is dark, bleak, gritty, and inventively vulgar. It’s also honest, painful, and occasionally tender.” — Booklist

From the Publisher

A powerful read from a writer who’s lived what he writes and writes what he lived, 86’d stands out as yet another example of Fante’s unique voice and bottoms-up, scraped-off-the-sidewalk prose.

Jerry Stahl

Told in a free-flowing narrative style that features a number of memorable characters, Fante’s novel is dark, bleak, gritty, and inventively vulgar. It’s also honest, painful, and occasionally tender.

Booklist

Praise for Dan Fante: “This writer has the telemarketer’s skill for keeping the mooch on the line: readers who don’t hang up right away very likely won’t be able to stop listening.

New York Times

Told in a free-flowing narrative style that features a number of memorable characters, Fante’s novel is dark, bleak, gritty, and inventively vulgar. It’s also honest, painful, and occasionally tender.

Booklist

Private investigator-turned-recovering alcoholic JD Fiorella used to have his life together. When a job went south and ended in bloodshed, JD turned to drinking and eventually went back home to Malibu, CA, to clean up while living with his mother. Just as he’s gotten some traction in the form of a steady job and a new apartment, JD’s life goes to hell once again when a friend from Alcoholics Anonymous is gruesomely mutilated and murdered.The investigation leads down a rabbit hole of old Hollywood money, a serial killer, and 11 bodies buried on Point Dume. But JD is more than ready to handle it, as the hardship in his life has left him almost as savage as the people he’s chasing.

Verdict This fifth novel (after 86’d; Chump Change; Mooch; Spitting off Tall Buildings) by the son of bohemian novelist John Fante has more violence and gore than the average murder mystery and the ambiguity of a brick wall. The gruesome descriptions might titillate some readers, but the violence seems done for its own sake and does nothing to save a very straightforward narrative. The characters lack nuance and, aside from the occasional slick one-liner, don’t have much to say or do beyond moving the plot forward. Only recommended for hard-core crime fiction fans with a taste for the ultraviolent.—Peter Petruski, Cumberland Cty. Lib. Syst., Carlisle, PA
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