Crime Pays

November, 1999

You know Jerry Stahl from his dark confessional Permanent Midnight, a memoir about his strung-out life as a drug user, which later became a Ben Stiller movie. Now, his novel Perv—A Love Story (Morrow) delivers characters that Stahl also seems to know intimately. He returns to the Seventies, when 15-year-old Bobby Stark's life (like Stahl's in Midnight) is plagued by demons. The boy's journey to self-discovery includes confrontations with a one-armed tattoo artist and his nymphomaniacal daughter,...