Dead Boys
by Richard Lange
Published by Little, Brown and Company
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Review by Claire Vath
The media is saturated with sordid tales of celebrity in Los Angeles. But seldom do you hear about the ordinary human beings that celebrities walk among.
But in his debut collection of short stories, Dead Boys, Richard Lange examines the human condition of the workingman—living, breathing, struggling, and dying against the desolate landscape of the city of angels.
“The wiry grass and twisted, oily shrubs that pick up where the roads dead-end and the sprinkler systems peter out are just waiting for an excuse to burst into flame,” Lange writes of the city’s wildfires, in one short story.
—Lange writes of a salesman who struggles to comprehend his sister’s brutal rape and the complexities of their tenuous relationship.
—Then there’s a widower, living the fast life of drugs and booze, haunted by the vengefulness of his deceased wife.
—A newsstand attendant tries to get in touch with an old girlfriend and becomes paranoid that a group of Vietnamese gangsters are out to get him.
—Another man smokes too much marijuana and ends up in the middle of the desert in a singed woman’s dress.
—Yet another yearns to break free of his everyday regimen.
Like those wildfires that rip haphazardly through the Los Angeles brush, Lange’s cast of flawed male characters wander through an aimless existence in the fast-paced city. Each story focuses on a different man haunted by moral instability and a past from which they are unable to detach themselves.
Each of the 12 short stories is presented in first person, adding an element of stark reality and a relatable quality to each character.
Lange asserts these moving accounts with such intensity that even the grittiest, most formidable scenes of desperation are articulated with such precision and honesty in this debut tour de force. A solid, stunningly accurate short-story collection, Lange’s dead-on writing is reminiscent of the greats: Capote, Bradbury, Salinger.
Armchair Interviews says: This book glows brighter than the scorching, ravaging Los Angeles fires.
Author’s Web site: http://www.RichLange.com