Stark House Steps Out

Stark House Press, known up till now for its reprints of hard boiled fiction, is venturing into publishing originals, having picked up the rights to Charlie Stella's novel, Johnny Porno. According to this blog post the novel is about New York in 1973, when the infamous Deep Throat found a wide audience (scroll down). From the description:


"It's the summer of 1973 and John Albano is a former construction worker with child support and rent payments he can't keep up with by driving for a Brooklyn car service, but then it's his quick hands and honorable nature that ultimately place him squarely in the middle of a perfect storm of danger.

Albano is just trying to make ends meet when he takes a weekend stint counting heads and collecting the take at illegal screenings of the recently banned porno film Deep Throat for Mafioso Eddie Vento. But a devious ex-wife, her more devious ex-husband, the wiseguys behind the film (including one obnoxious wannabe with a frenzied beef for Albano), the Fleetwood Eldorado used in the opening scene of the porno film and a host of cops (both good and bad-including the deranged one Albano punched out) snowball into an often humorous, sometimes violent, action-packed page turner loaded with the masterful dialogue that earned Charlie Stella six *starred* reviews and countless comparisons to such masters of the genre as Elmore Leonard, George V. Higgins, Donald Westlake and Mario Puzo over the course of his six contemporary crime novels."

Sounds promising, and it's good to see Stark House stepping out and taking a chance on new fiction. Hopefully, JP will do well enough that Ed Gorman and company will do it again.