Jason Starr

Jason Starr was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York and began writing in
college, at Binghamton University. After graduation, Jason moved to
Manhattan and joined up with several theater groups. He had a few plays
produced at Off-Off Broadway theaters, but continued to have a strong
interest in fiction, particularly crime fiction. Jason's first novel was
COLD CALLER, about an unemployed ad-exec who'll do anything to get his
career back on track. The manuscript made its way to No Exit Press in the
U.K., and then sold to numerous publishers around the world, including W.W.
Norton in the United States.

COLD CALLER was selected as Publisher's Weekly First Fiction pick and was
hailed by Kirkus Reviews as "just the thing for fans who miss the acid noir
that Jim Thompson dispensed in The Grifters." In the critical work,
Twentieth Century Crime Fiction, (Oxford Unversity Press, 2005), author Lee
Horsley selected COLD CALLER as one of the basic texts for discussion.
Jason's second novel, NOTHING PERSONAL, about a compulsive gambler who
hatches a sick kidnapping plot to pay off debts, was hailed as the best
novel of the year by Bookends. Jason's third novel, FAKE I.D., concerns a
bouncer's desperate attempts to join a horse-owning syndicate. His fourth
novel, HARD FEELINGS, about a computer networking salesman, trying to do
deal with a horror from his past, was a "Penzler Pick" and the first ever
original novel published by the prestigious American publisher, Vintage
Crime/Black Lizard. TOUGH LUCK, Jason's fifth novel, about a young guy in
Brooklyn who gets in deep with a mob figure, was an Anthony Award finalist
and won the Barry Award for best paperback. Jason's sixth novel, TWISTED
CITY, about the devastating consequences a financial journalist faces when
he attempts to recover a stolen wallet, was a Barry Award finalist and an
Anthony Award winner.

In 2006, Jason's new novel LIGHTS OUT, a thrilling tale of jealousy and
murder set in Brooklyn, was published by St. Martin's Press in the U.S.,
and Orion in the U.K. Also in 2006, the heralded new American pulp publisher
Hard Case Crime, published BUST, a crime novel that Jason wrote with Irish
novelist Ken Bruen (BUST was an IMBA bestseller), and Vintage Books
published a collection of stories and essays on horse racing called
BLOODLINES: A HORSE RACING ANTHOLOGY, which Jason co-edited with Maggie
Estep.

Jason's next novel, due from Orion and St. Martin's in the summer, 2007, is
THE FOLLOWER, called "this generation's Looking for Mr. Goodbar" by the New
York Post.

Jason's work has been published in ten languages, including in Germany by
Diogenes. TOP JOB (the German edition of COLD CALLER) was adapted as an hour
long radio drama by Deutschland Radio, and was recently chosen as one of the
top 50 novels of the past 60 years by the German newspaper Süddeutsche
Zeitung. As a result, in 2006 a new hardcover edition of TOP JOB was
published as part of a pupular series of crime novels (SZ Krimibibliothek)
by Süddeutsche Zeitung. Upon its publication in 1998, the French edition of
COLD CALLER was selected as the official gift of the prestigious 813 book
group.

Currently, two of Jason's novels are in development as films. A screenplay
for TWISTED CITY has been written by John David Coles (director of Sex and
the City, Desperate Housewives, Gray's Anatomy etc) and Coles will direct.
Jason is writing an adaptation of COLD CALLER for the Australian company,
Smoking Gun Productions, and is setting the story in Sydney. In 2005, the
Southern Australian Film Commission unanimously approved the development
funding for COLD CALLER.

In addition to adapting his own novels, Jason writes original screenplays.
He was commissioned to write a screenplay, which Halle Berry is producing
and starring in, called OCTOBER SQUALL. Currently in development at Fox
Searchlight, October Squall is a hard-edged racial drama about an
African-American woman who is raped by a white man, and her subsequent
stormy relationship with her son, the product of the rape.

Currently, Jason is at work on a new novel, as well as an original graphic
novel for DC Vertigo. He lives with his wife and daughter in Manhattan. His
literary agent is Brian DeFiore.