Strip - Book Review

"Strip" [Thomas Perry/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/352 pgs] as a book wants to approach the essence of a hard- boiled, humor-ridden pulp novel of sorts but comes across feeling more like the movie adaptation of "Big Trouble". While there are moments of slight brilliance, specifically in the turnaround style of a trap gone wrong, most of the story filters somewhere between soap opera and barely basic cable plot contrivance. The plot centers around a case of mistaken identity where a man completely oblivious of himself at first becomes the target of a local low-level gangster who pegs him as a rip off artist but can't, for sure, verify his identity. His murder is created in theory to be more symbolic than anything. The gangster runs two strip joints and a dance club in the San Fernando Valley. There are bimbos and mimbos galore and none of the characters with the exception of the hunted man and the "cleaner" working for the gangster have any clue what is going on. Nobody is thinking with their heads or their hearts but rather something else. While, in some novels, this can be ultimately fun, it has to be done with a bit of whimsy to show that the author is a couple steps ahead of his characters. Here the plot meanders and, as a point of fact, the main character disappears for nearly 35 pages. The resolution, while optimistic, has the believability of a "Real World" episode. That said, the pace and general aloofness of many of the situations make for a quick and pleasant read but never outshines its underlying base material which barely makes the cut. Out of 5, I give "Strip" a 2.