THE FOLLOWER
Jason Starr
St. Martin’s Minotaur
Thriller
ISBN-10: 0312359748
ISBN-13: 9780312359744

No one is writing books quite like Jason Starr. His latest novel is labeled a “thriller,” and yes, it is most definitely that --- I was actually afraid to read the last several pages, for what they might reveal --- but like his other books, Starr’s narratives handily slice in and out of life, shattering character and plot stereotypes to an unsettling degree. The reader never knows what is going to happen, or how it will happen. Starr, however, does quite a bit more in THE FOLLOWER than turn an expectation or two upside down.

The book defies convention from the git-go. Starr begins things slowly, almost agonizingly so, setting up his main characters and a few secondary ones with a minimum of flash before he begins to tantalizingly disrobe their psyches. The main story ebbs and flows around Katie Porter and Peter Wells. Porter is from a small New England town, an administrative assistant fresh out of college living in Manhattan and working for a financial PR agency. But her life, as she is rapidly discovering, is neither as exciting nor as fulfilling as she thought it would be. Wells is a few years older than Porter, from the same small town, and also living in Manhattan. He is in love with her and has their life together planned out to the last nuance; he sets up a chance meeting, starts finding reasons to run into her, and slowly begins interjecting himself into her life.

No one is going to stop Porter’s Peter Pan boyfriend (least of all Andy Barnett), who seems as bent on seducing everyone who moves (provided they meet his careful and exacting standards) as he is on convincing Porter to offer him the marble peach. Porter, however, is not exactly blameless. Indeed, it would be tough to pick a winner in a three-way bet among Porter, Barnett and a bassinet to pick the shallowest of the group. Porter’s and Barnett’s friends, with the exception of Porter’s roommate, aren’t much better. Wells, on the other hand, is by no means shallow. He is actually quite deep, a yawning, dangerous, dark chasm that is patiently waiting to swallow Porter and anyone who gets in his way.

Starr would have created a riveting tale just sticking to his basic plot, letting it unfurl and displaying what happens. But he takes different vignettes in THE FOLLOWER and examines each from the perspective of the participants, by showing how different each person’s version of the same truth becomes. This method is particularly effective after the first extended outing between Wells and Porter; as the reader learns of the events first through Wells’s eyes and then through Porter’s, it becomes more than obvious that the book will either have a horrifying ending or result in horrors without end. Or both.

In the space of just a few novels, Starr seems on the verge of creating a genre unto himself, and THE FOLLOWER is one more, very important reason why.

   --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

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