I have long admired Richard Lange---I even blurbed one of his books, The Smack, several years back, and very willingly---and this time my approbation comes unsolicited. Here, after the successful "horror outing" of his atypical "Rovers," he's back working in his wheelhouse, the gritty, desperate, beer-soaked and weed-fogged milieu of Los Angeles. The eponymous character, pingponging from one shitty job to the next, strikes up a whirlwind romance with a woman of decidedly unsound mind, and the two embark on an ill-advised, detour-filled road trip. While I don't think this book can be pigeonholed into a "crime" or "thriller" category---it is much too episodic and character-centered for that---the story's hard-boiled world view, replete with dark and realistic ancillary characters and razor-sharp dialogue, will keep you turning pages and rooting for these two star-crossed "hustlers".