Jason Starr was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Growing up, he enjoyed sports such as baseball, tennis, and horse racing, but didn't have much interest in literature. He began writing plays and fiction in college at Binghamton University. In the 1990's, he had several plays produced at Off-Off Broadway theater companies in New York. In 1997, Starr's first crime novel, Cold Caller, was selected as a 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." Upon its publication in 1998, the French edition of Cold Caller was selected as the official gift of the prestigious 813 book group. In the critical work Twentieth Century Crime Fiction, (Oxford University Press, 2005), author Lee Horsley selected Cold Caller as one of the basic texts for discussion.

Starr'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. Starr'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, Starr'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. Starr'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, Starr's novel Lights Out, a tale of jealousy and murder set in Brooklyn, was first published by St. Martin's Press in the U.S. and Orion in the U.K. It was hailed as one of the best crime novels of the year by Barnes and Noble.com and Bookreporter.com. Also in 2006, the heralded American pulp publisher Hard Case Crime, published Bust, a crime novel that Starr wrote with Irish novelist Ken Bruen (BUST was an IMBA bestseller). That same year, Vintage Books published a collection of stories and essays on horse racing called Bloodlines: A Horse Racing Anthology, which Starr co-edited with Maggie Estep.

In 2007, Starr's thriller The Follower, called "this generation's Looking for Mr. Goodbar" by the New York Post, was first published by St. Martin's Press and Orion Books. Also in 2007, Hard Case Crime published Slide, a second novel co-authored by Starr and Ken Bruen. In 2008, Starr and Bruen's third novel, The Max was published in what became known as "The Bust Trilogy."

Starr's work has been published in nine 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 popular series of crime novels (SZ Krimibibliothek) by Süddeutsche Zeitung.

NOVELS

• 1998 - Cold Caller
• 2000 - Nothing Personal
• 2000 - Fake I.D.
• 2002 - Hard Feelings
• 2003 - Tough Luck
• 2004 - Twisted City
• 2006 - Lights Out
• 2007 - The Follower
• 2009 - Panic Attack

NOVELS (co-written with Ken Bruen)

• 2006 - Bust
• 2007 - Slide
• 2008 - The Max

GRAPHIC NOVELS

• 2009 - The Chill

SHORT STORY COLLECTION (co-editor)

• 2006 - Bloodlines: An Anthology of Horse Racing