Clancy Martin doesn't really need us to give him some love for his debut novel. Since the release of How to Sell (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), he's been the subject of positive attention in national publications such as Newsweek and Rolling Stone. The astounding trick of the book is this: Nothing much actually happens. OK, OK, a kid grows up, leaves his home country, learns the fine-jewelry business, gets married and has a kid; a lot of unethical and illegal stuff goes down; and a couple of people die. But Martin's prose hustles us through it all at such a coke-fueled velocity that, like his characters, we barely question what's really happening. Which is part of the point. Well played, Clancy.
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