Jim Gavin talks about the mix of fact and fiction in 'Middle Men'

There's a subtle arc to Jim Gavin's first book, "Middle Men" (Simon & Schuster: 224 pp., $23). Gathering seven stories largely set in Southern California, it opens with a high school basketball player and ends with Marty Costello, a plumbing supply salesman who "averages 50,000 miles per year, vast territories, circles of latitude, Inglewood to Barstow, sailing across SoCal, all day every day."

By David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times Book Critic

February 15, 2013