Dead Boys Richard Lange Little Brown $21.00 HC

The main characters in Richard Lange's collection of short stories are all young men who, like the cartoon character Wiley Coyote, have run those three steps off the cliff and only just now realize that they've done so.

They're falling. These tightly drawn pictures of Los Angelinos are as gritty as sandpaper. Lange portrays their lower middle class angst, and failed aspirations so realistically that you're glad you're not one even though you know you could have been. These stories aren't true mysteries but as noir character sketches you won't see much better. We' re all at the cliff's edge one way or another at one time or another.

Read Dead Boys from the relative safety of the edge. See if you don't agree.

Dave Biemann