Tough Luck

Mickey Prada is a nice kid. Perhaps too nice…

He works in a neighbourhood seafood market in Brooklyn putting fish on ice. He's got a nice girlfriend. He even delayed college a year, to look after his sick dad who's gradually losing his marbles and has a tendency to go walkabout.

But Mickey's got a little problem. A customer at the fish store, Angelo Santoro, keeps asking Mickey to place bets for him and Angelo keeps losing. As Angelo gets further in the hole, his bad luck is turning out to be Mickey's too. Now Mickey's got his bookie after him and Angelo's showing him the butt of his pistol rather than paying him back. So when his best friend, Chris, asks Mickey to join him on a can't-lose caper, Mickey decides to go along. But, sure-fire schemes often have a way of backfiring, and this one is sending Mickey into an uncharted part of Brooklyn, where fish like Chris and Mickey have trouble…

'From the first page of this thriller, you know things are only going to get worse, but you can't stop reading' – Newsweek

'Jason Starr's Tough Luck [is] the kind of book you read with a wince, but you read it straight through because you can't put it down. Starr [is] a terrifically taut writer' – The Baltimore Sun