Pimp and Circumstance

Shining City by Seth Greenland

by Char Vandermeer

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Marcus Ripps is a sad sack. He's an under-appreciated, underpaid underling at a toy company. He's a fundamentally good seed, but his wife barely notices him; his sex life has disappeared under her layers of tattered sweatshirts; and his pole-dancing, unemployed live-in mother-in-law smokes weed in front of his 12-year-old son.

Seth Greenland's novel Shining City (Bloomsbury) takes off after our Nietzsche-reading hero learns that his estranged gangster brother bought it in a hot tub with two high-end hookers. His company moves to China, and, jobless and prospectless, Ripps remains in L.A. — at least until he takes up pimping.

Up to this point, life just seems to have happened. And Ripps, despite his degree from Berkeley, is more or less content. Until, that is, his home equity loan has run nearly dry, his wife's business tanks, his son's pleas for a kick-ass bar mitzvah intensify, and he bombs his latest in a series of increasingly depressing job interviews, this one with a born-again arms manufacturer.

Suddenly, the dry-cleaning business left to him by his Fed-pursued dead brother doesn't seem like such a bad deal. But from the moment Ripps accepts his first wad of cash from a tall blond drink named Amstel, he realizes he's into a far different cleaning business than he bargained for. But what the hell? He and his inherited henchman run an advertisement in the paper, and within a week have a handful of new employees.

Greenland efficiently maps out a bumpin' joyride of sex, prostitutes, murder, betrayal, revenge and extravagant bar mitzvahs for Breeze (our hero's nom de pimp). Soon, everyone orbiting his previously uneventful universe are in on the game.

The author takes himself just seriously enough to elevate Shining City from trashy to something with a touch of class. Greenland doesn't take himself so seriously that he forgets to have fun — it is, after all, a novel about a hapless dude who chauffeurs a minivan full of hookers around L.A.

(c_vandermeer@citypaper.net)