[close] A ravingly readable tale of a downwardly mobile yuppie who'll just kill to get ahead. Think Jim Thompson with an MBA . . . Once Bill Moss was a rising VP at a topflight ad agency, but now he works as a "cold caller" at a telemarketing firm in the Times Square area. He's got a bad case of the urban blues. Still, he's good at his work and (he thinks) about to be promoted, when out of the blue he's fired. So Bill snaps . . . and the next thing he knows he has a dead supervisor on his hands and problems no career counselor can help him with. In Cold Caller Jason Starr retools the James M. Cain novel of cynical suspense and murder for the fiber-optic age. [close]