He's just changed jobs, selling network solutions to New York City office information systems, and his boss piles on the pressure for that first sale even as he mouths patience and support. If Richie has personal problems, they're not to interfere with work. And he's got personal problems, you betcha. Even more than those caused by the wife and the boss.

One day while crossing the street, Richie spots a kid from the old block back when. The guy's a successful lawyer now, but the encounter triggers memories Richie has suppressed for years while he made his marriage and career work. It's the extra weight of this emotional baggage that causes the first cracks in Richie's character, in this Jim Thompson-like story of personality disintegration.

This is Jason Starr's fourth novel, and he knows the subtle tricks to reveal character through the action. At 245 pages Hard Feelings is a compellingly quick read. At times you'll want to grab Richie by the throat and make him tell the other characters in the book what's troubling him. But of course Richie doesn't, and he knows best. The others, the boss, the wife, the cops, aren't listening to him anyway. Richie has to handle his problems in his own way, and if he seems annoyingly aloof at times it's probably because he always has been forced to work things out for himself.

There are a handful of grammatical clunkers in this book that are so awkward they break rhythm and momentarily cause the reader to think about something other than the progress of the story. It's a first-person narrative, however, and they are the overreaching type of words ambitious salesmen often use. Starr quickly has us back grinding our teeth at his well-drawn collection of familiarly nasty characters.