The Pandemonium Of The Sun

When I started reading The Max I didn’t realize that it was the concluding volume in a trilogy. It turns out it’s not a big deal. It can be read separately, without any knowledge of the prior volumes. In The Max we follow Max Fisher as he goes off to jail, and his former lover Angela Petrakos on her journey from Greece back to the United States to weasel some money out of Max. What follows is a wildly irreverent ride, the type I would expect from a book imprint called Hard Case Crime. Ken Bruen and Jason Starr have composed a very funny and surprisingly meta story. I don’t think I have ever read a mystery that is nearly so self-reflexive to the genre as The Max is. Highly recommended.