REVIEW: TRIGGER CITY by Sean Chercover

SYNOPSIS: PI Ray Dudgeon is a mess. He has not recovered, either physically or psychologically, from the torture he experienced in Big City, Bad Blood. The love of his life doesn't think he'll live so long that she wants to hang around for the funeral. He's so broke he's going to have to sell his beloved '68 Shelby. But then he gets this case, a really good paying case (he can keep the Shelby), and there should be no real work involved because the facts are all right there in the police files: Joan Richmond, manager of payroll for a department store chain, was murdered by Steven Zhang, a co-worker from the IT department. He shot her, left a written confession with her body, then he went home and called his wife, said he'd done something very bad, sat down and blew his brains out. To quote the Kevin Bacon character in A Few Good Men, "These are the facts of the case. And they are undisputed." Remember the tagline from "Absence of Malice?" Everything they said was accurate. But none of it was true. Chercover is more succinct: Facts are not truth.


REVIEW: Ray Dudgeon is a leading man to die for or to kill for, depending on whether you are a reader or an author. Ray comes from a similar mold as Elvis Cole and Lincoln Perry. Ray's blessing, or more probably his curse, is that he is more flawed than either of those two fine PIs. Don't get me wrong, he's altogether a noble guy when it comes to working the case and protecting the innocent. But Ray is almost incapable of compromise and although that may sound like a virtue, in what I consider one of the most powerful scenes in the book, Ray's journalist friend, Terry Green, communicates in no uncertain terms that that is just not the case:

Terry swallowed some more Scotch. "Don't start. I'm not in the mood."

"What?"

"You ever listen to yourself? You come on with all that sanctimonious bullshit. Sure, you're better than the rest of us. You quit, I stayed. Therefore, I sold out."

"Whoa. I never said that."

"You say it all the time. You say it every time you sneer about the state of the news business. Every time you talk about how you couldn't handle the compromises, like you're admitting some personal failing, but what you're really saying is plenty clear. Let me tell you something: quitting doesn't make you morally superior. I'm still in the trenches, busting my ass. And once in a while, I get a good story out there."

"Terry..."

"Yeah, I've been drinking. Doesn't mean it isn't true."

I fished my smokes from a pocket and lit one. Drank some scotch. I didn't want to deal with this right now. But it had obviously been brewing awhile and now it was out in the open and I couldn't pretend he hadn't said it.

And I couldn't escape the feeling that our friendship was hanging in the balance.

And coming across to his friends as morally superior is only one of his faults, and not the worst. What Ray Dudgeon is is a fully-developed, 3D, flesh-and-blood man, one who you like but who also makes you cringe occasionally and say, 'oh, no, he didn't just do that, did he?' And I'm not talking about the standard bad-boy behavior for some fictional PIs either, like Spenser and Hawke. Uh uh. Ray's a lot more Chicago, a lot more human than that. And needs to have friends willing to get in his face, that's for sure. Remember (if you've read the books) how Spenser gave his lady love, Susan Silverman, all the space in the world when she wanted to sever their relationship? Let me just say, Ray and Spenser would have a huge difference of opinion on how to deal with the fallout.

Not every character in this book is as fully developed as Ray. Good thing or I'd still be reading it. But every character who is close to Ray, or gets close to him, is well-developed, and even some least likely to be fully-drawn are handled beautifully. For example, the murder victim, Joan Richmond. This case really is not about her, or only peripherally, and yet Ray spends a lot of time getting to know her. She had no close friends; for family, only a father whom she had never really known. Her work could hardly be described as absorbing. But Ray spends time on her, in her house, among her music and furnishings, and he gets to know her pain, her loneliness, and through Ray, so do we get to know her, and ache for her, and grieve for her.

Chercover makes a fine case in this story for how little we Americans know about our government. We were all made aware by the media that our government uses private mercenaries in Iraq. How many of us read about paramilitary corporations beyond that particular news story? We all know, or think we do, about the genocide in Darfur. How many people are aware which foreign government has supported that devastation, and why? Chercover poses the question, and it may not be theoretical, what if a corporation of American mercenaries contracted out to work for a foreign government? The dangers of even allowing such corporations to exist, let alone thrive, pose threats far beyond the occasional international incident. Where is the accountability? Who becomes complicit in the actions of that company? Our government? Us? Trigger City is a terrific book not just because the story is compelling but also because the story and its outcome are so very possible. Maybe even probable. Maybe even certain. I'll buy the booze if Chercover wants to talk about it.

You can read this book and just enjoy the story if you want; it's a dandy and it's populated with interesting characters. (I forgot to mention Gravedigger Peace, didn't I? A favorite character of mine, reminds me of someone I know.) You don't have to go any deeper into the questions posed than you want to. But you should. Not only does it make for a richer reading experience but -- listen to me -- under the guise of crime fiction, Chercover raises issues that every American should be aware of, should read about, should think hard about. Should not make snap judgements about. But the pace of this book is Usain Bolt-swift. Start to finish, this is a sprint, not a marathon, and that makes it easy to just not think hard about these issues, to just move on to the next book. So let me urge you: Don't read too fast. Seriously. Puzzle pieces go flying everywhere in any given scene, and in all the excitement it gets easy to overlook the niceties Chercover has incorporated into the story. In short, he won't always stop to explain the fine details to you. If you aren't sure what he's talking about (MK-ULTRA, for example) stop and find out. That's why we have Google and Wikipedia.

And here's why it's important that you do this: Facts are not truth.

REVIEW: RAIN DOGS by Sean Doolittle

Synopsis: Investigative journalist Tom Coleman is running from the death of his young daughter and the ruin of his marriage. He is running to the bottle. Leaving behind his job in Chicago for his grandfather's legacy in the Sandhills region of Nebraska, Tom encounters a destroyed meth lab, drug runners, police brutality, and faces his own weakness. He also renews his acquaintance with his first love, Abby, now a widow and with a stepson who is right up to his teen angst in all the trouble.

On the whole I enjoyed this book and I think author Sean Doolittle has tremendous potential. My expectations may have been a little high because the recommendation to read Doolittle's work came from one of my favorite authors, Michael Koryta, who said that Doolittle was writing the best crime fiction in America right now. High praise indeed, and possibly true of Doolittle's more recent work which I do intend to read. This book, however, is good but not good enough to qualify it as the best crime fiction in America. And after reading Laura Lippman's blurb on the jacket: "Sean Doolittle is a cult writer for the masses -- hip, smart and mordantly funny," I think she must have been referring to a different book as well. Rain Dogs is very much a mainstream work of crime fiction. In other words, if this book is 'cult' crime fiction then so is Laura Lippman's.

Characterization: The characters are solidly drawn but rarely went deep enough to resonate with me, in spite of the great torment that provides the protagonist his excuse to drink. Compare the descriptions of Tom Coleman's binges to one of the Dave Robicheaux character's (from author James Lee Burke) lapses. There is a relentless and awesomely ugly honesty in the Robicheaux portrait. Coleman's episodes are more simplistic. He drinks and then he awakens. The nastiness in-between somehow seems not only not to be part of the Coleman character, it almost seems never to happen. Except for one truly well-written, out-of-the-body depiction of a drunk Coleman holding a gun to his head and contemplating suicide it's hard to believe the guy is really as pathetic as such a man would be in reality. It's like a cheat, that the author gives you this terribly flawed character but then disguises the results of the flaw so well that you are hardly ever out of sympathy with him. If Coleman had no worse habit than biting his fingernails I would have had the same reaction to him. The finest bit of characterization is that of the county sheriff, Roy Hilliard. Hilliard walks and talks like he could be a stereotypical small-town crooked sheriff but the man goes deeper than that, often leaving the reader wondering about his motives. He's a political creature as well as a community leader; a man of realism but not so pragmatic that he lacks fire in the belly. For me, he was the most interesting character in the story. Best part of all the characterization was the dialogue. Doolittle can definitely write dialogue, from strait-laced Federal agents to laid-back stoners.

Pacing: Slow to build, but not too slow, the tension does wind tighter and tighter. From the beginning, small bits of information are dropped, keeping the reader's interest honed right through the climactic confrontation. I thought the pacing was perfection.

Setting / Ambiance: Maybe I didn't feel like I was about to go canoeing on the river with these folks, but I still got a good feeling about the distances between everything, including people, and I was surprised by how the landscape felt more welcoming and much more variable than I anticipated when I first realized the setting was western Nebraska. I was totally intrigued by the aquifer and I'll be reading up on that, you better believe.

Plot: Maybe not the most original I've read, but given there were some holes in the story and a certain lack of resolution, it's probably best that the story was more mainstream than cult, Laura Lippman notwithstanding. The story in fact, is rather basic, and if there is a single theme that unites the book and lifts it above merely being an enjoyable read, well, I missed it. So sue me.

Overall satisfaction: Maybe it doesn't seem like it, but I really did enjoy Rain Dogs. It held my interest and moved along nicely without rushing me or leaving me in the dust. I feel certain that author Sean Doolittle can do better (probably even already has), and I love to read along as a new author begins to stretch and find for him/herself what works and what does not, and just what his own writing voice is. If I were recommending this book, it would be to people who are fans of Michael Koryta, Robert Crais, Sean Chercover and Giles Blunt perhaps, with the advisory that this particular book was written by an author who has the potential to be as good as they are. Doolittle's particular gift lies in the easy flow of his prose, the dialogue and exposition never step on each other and neither gets short shrift. And one of the best things about Doolittle's prose is the lack of affectation and pretention, something all too prevalent among certain new writers who think they are the next coming of Ken Bruen.

In summary, I'd say that Rain Dogs, regardless of its shortcomings, is one of the best books I've read this month, and that puts it squarely in the company of books by Koryta, Winslow, and Westlake. Not quite to their level of craftsmanship perhaps but it sure enough makes Doolittle a writer that I'll keep tabs on.

BETWEEN THE DARK AND THE DAYLIGHT - Edited by Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg

BETWEEN THE DARK AND THE DAYLIGHT and 27 More of the Best Crime and Mystery Stories of the Year

I have sometimes opened an anthology of short fiction, scanned the table of contents, noted two or three authors whose names I recognized, and wondered 'who are all these other writers and why haven't I heard of them?' Sadly, sometimes after reading the stories I know the answers. It took me years to understand that by their very natures, anthologies are often of uneven quality. Yes, even the annual 'Best American Mystery Stories' series has been known to publish some stories that have made me question the editors' capacity for alcohol.

I'm happy to report that such is not the case with Between the Dark and the Daylight. Whether you recognize all the names or not, you won't find one dog of a story in this book, starting with Father's Day (an L&O-ish Harry Bosch tale by Michael Connelly) right through to the melancholy horror of Sack of Woe (John Harvey).

In between those excellent bookends, you'll find the Edgar-winning Skinhead Central (T. Jefferson Parker) and the Macavity and Anthony nominated A Sleep Not Unlike Death (Sean Chercover), the latter of which is a must read for Chercover's fans who want to know more about his enigmatic character, Gravedigger Peace.

I have to commend the editors, Ed Gorman and Martin Greenburg, because their selection is flawless. I wish I had time to talk about all 28 stories but I'm going to limit myself to just three more, the first of which is the title story, Between the Dark and the Daylight (Tom Piccirilli). There's one word for this story: harrowing. Maybe it's because I have an overwhelming fear of heights and this story involves a runaway balloon. Maybe it's the helpless child in that balloon. Maybe it's the four men dangling from ropes, trying desperately to save the child. And maybe it's all of that and more. Because that's just when the author is getting started.

Two more from this remarkably fine collection, and they come from the one-two punch of mother and daughter, Patricia Abbott and Megan Abbott. Megan's story is Cheer, about a nasty little squad of privileged cheerleaders who will never out-nasty their coach. This one left me reeling.

Patricia's story, The Instrument of Their Desire, stands out even among so many other great stories. It is a deeply wrenching story of family loyalty and perceived betrayal and decades-old secrets, and is my favorite out of a terrific bunch of stories. This story delivers an atmosphere of abject poverty without ever dwelling on the details, but only the results of such desperate need, and Abbott does a superlative job of bringing her small cast of characters to vivid life. Yes, I cried. So sue me.

Other authors in this collection include Brett Battles (Perfect Gentleman is a perfect jewel), Gary Phillips, Martin Limón, Charles Ardai, Bill Pronzini, and the incomparable Bill Crider. And yes, there are more and you do know their names: Oates, Pickard, Harris, Robinson, etc, etc. Although the editors consider this a "best of" collection for 2008, I would stack these stories against any other "best of" collection, from any year, they are all that good.