What Writer Issue

The Follower

Source: The List (Issue 579)
Date: 2 July 2007 (updated 3 August 2007)
Written by: Miles Fielder

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JASON STARR

The Follower (Orion)

MYSTERY THRILLER

A story about a stalker is hardly a novel idea, and Brooklyn-born and bred Jason Starr’s unimaginative treatment of the phenomenon brings absolutely nothing new to it. Set in a Manhattan populated with jocular and bimbotic college graduates, The Follower involves a ménage à trois between newly employed Katie, frat-pack boyfriend Andy, and the dweeb Peter, who has something more than a crush on the working girl.

Events unfold in a tediously predictable manner, leading with little tension or suspense to a foregone conclusion, while Starr’s evocation of young lives in the big city is pedestrian and his characterisations perfunctory. Even stalker Peter’s backstory is a clichéd spin on the Oedipus complex. An enlightening examination of an obsessed individual’s coveting of a stranger might not be expected from this kind of trashy fiction, but Starr fails even to deliver anything in the way of pulpy thrills.

(Miles Fielder)

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