Point Doom

In this hard-edged he-man action novel from Fante (Mooch), one-time private eye James “JD” Fiorella, a 44-year-old alcoholic living with his mother in Point Dume in Malibu, Calif., crosses paths with a serial killer—a nemesis trained as a child in sadism by Nazis in the death camps, no less. Fante, the son of novelist John Fante, ambles quirkily toward the showdown with side trips to AA meetings and JD landing a job as a car salesman, plus a grotesque incidental highlight when the ex-PI steals a severed penis from a crime scene. Whiny and unlikable, JD is full of bluster. Of a thug who’s threatened his mother, he says, “I’ll kill his bodyguards and I’ll kill his dogs. I’ll kill everybody I see.” Yet somehow one suspects JD just might not be up to the task. Fans of regulation crime novels will likely find the action unfocused, even blurry, but readers on the lookout for the unusual have got their summer read. Agent: David Hale Smith, Inkwell Management. (June)