Things aren’t going so well for Richie Segal. His
prospects at the job are pretty miserable and, what’s more
humiliating, his wife’s prospects at her job are pretty
good. Richie knows he’s a good salesman, but he just can’t
seem to land an account. And he’s starting to drink again.
And worry about whether Paula’s seeing that old high
school flame, or maybe someone new. It’s a little early,
at thirty-four, for a mid-life crisis, but that’s pretty
much what it feels like. And there’re those unwelcome
memories of the neighborhood bully, Michael Rudnick and
what he did to Richie when he was thirteen. Richie Segal’s
feeling, well, abused.
Just when Richie’s about as
low as he can get, he runs into Rudnick on the street and
knows exactly what he needs to do. And suddenly things
seem to be going much better. That is until they get much,
much worse. In the classic tradition of Jim Thompson and
James M. Cain, Hard Feelings is novel that lets us
into the mind of an ordinary guy capable of things that
even he couldn’t have imagined.