Joe Hustle

After a successful left turn into the supernatural in the 2021 vampire novel Rovers, Lange returns with a memorably gritty neo-noir. Joe Hustle lives up to his moniker, surviving on odd jobs and the generosity of a rogues’ gallery of characters in his orbit. Tending bar, minding the register at a convenience store, driving drunk people around at all hours: anything he can take to eke out another day on the seedy side of Los Angeles. Everything changes when he’s hired on a painting job up in the Hollywood Hills and meets Emily, the owner’s wild-child sister. Joe and Emily begin a tenuous but intense relationship, providing Joe with a stability and a sense of purpose he hasn’t had in years, one that is threatened when he finds himself homeless, he becomes the target of a local drug dealer, and Emily begs him to take a cross-country road trip to see her estranged daughter. The chapters with action alternate with transcripts of Joe’s conversation with an unidentified person to flesh out his backstory.