Book Review: Port Vila Blues (1996) by Garry Disher

If you've ever read any of the Parker crime novels by Richard Stark (I've a got piece on him here), then there won't be many surprises waiting for you in the Wyatt novels by Garry Disher. The setting is Australia instead of the US, but in every other regard Wyatt is simply Parker's Down Under cousin. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Most genre writers ride on the coattails of the historical greats in their field, and in the case of crime/mystery fiction there are very few contemporary fictional sleuths/heroes who don't carry some of the DNA of Phillip Marlowe, Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, and, yes, Parker.

In Port Vila Blues Wyatt, a career thief every bit as ruthless and efficient as Parker, faces off against a bunch of corrupt cops after his latest burglary unearths a Tiffany brooch that leads to a crooked judge who's masterminding his own team of burglars. There's double-crosses, random acts of violence, and Wyatt has to get himself out of some very tight situations. The writing is good, but if you've read anything by Stark you're left wishing that he had not taken a twenty-five-year hiatus in writing Parker novels.

What's interesting about Parker, Wyatt and Lee Child's Jack Reacher (yet another of Parker's literary cousins) is the appeal these sociopaths have for readers. Yes, they are sociopaths. What distinguishes the firm of Parker, Wyatt & Reacher from other crime fiction heroes and anti-heroes is their utter cold-bloodedness, their disconnect from normal life and emotions, and their casual use of lethal and non-lethal violence. In the real world, people like this are behind bars for lengthy stretches or on death row, and society is happy that that's where they are. In fiction, however, a significant number of readers take a vicarious thrill in the remorseless actions of PW & R. It's rather disturbing and revealing that a great many people have a secret fantasy that involves either being a stone cold killer, or wishing that there was flinty-eyed avenging angel out there (take a bow, Jack Reacher) willing and eager to kill without mercy or hesitation in order to return the social order to its rightful balance. What separates PW & R from more traditional heroes is their thorough disconnect with normal human relationships and behavior. PW & R don't have hobbies, they have no permanent relationships, no living relatives, they have alliances rather than friendships, most quotidian human pleasures are a mystery to them, and the opposite sex only exists for casual sex. James Bond may have been the first hero of this type (here's my piece on Bond), but at least his sociopathy was moderated by rampant sensualism; PW & R are positively monk-like in their tastes--Reacher, for example, makes a fetish of only drinking black coffee.

I'll admit I'm a fan of PW & R, but it's something of a guilty pleasure. Like a lot of other readers, I guess I have a secret, perverse desire for an agent of chaos and violence to be at large in the world to disrupt my safe, predictable middle-class existence. I know that it would be best and safest to live in a Miss Marple world, but every once in a while I'd like to see PW & R blow through town and knock over a bank, gun down a crime lord, and break the arms of some thugs. But please, no casual sex with Miss Marple. Some worlds should never collide.

Teen Pulp Fiction

If you don't work at a library it's unlikely that you ever feel the need to take a detailed look at shelves and shelves of a particular literary genre. If, say, mysteries are your thing you might look over the selection at a bookstore, but you probably do an unconscious edit as you glance at the shelves, ignoring authors you don't like, covers you find unappealing, paperbacks vs. hardcovers, and so on. This past week I had to do a complete weeding of the teen section in one of Toronto's downtown libraries. It was an eyeopener.

The first thing you notice (and this also applies to teen sections in mega-bookstores like Chapters or Barnes & Noble) is that teen fiction might as well be labelled Teen Fiction For Girls. At least 70% of teen fiction titles are for girls only, with almost all of these books revolving around social and romantic problems in high school. The few titles that are aimed at teenage boys usually deal with serious issues such as drug abuse, broken families or crime. The rest are sports-themed or fall into the fantasy genre.

Looking through the teen section it comes as no surprise that teenage boys read so little. If I was a teenage boy browsing through this section I'd feel completely unwelcome: the message being sent by teen sections in libraries and bookstores is that only girls should be interested in reading. Adding to the problem is that so many of the titles aimed at boys are issue-oriented. These novels tackle social ills and evils in what seems like a transparent attempt to attract the attention of the people who order books for libraries, not the people who actually read them. So much of this literature seems written to "improve" the reader by discussing the issues that are "important" or "relevant" to him. The person who orders a gross of these books gets to feel virtuous, but their intended audience? Last time I checked, what teenage boys think is important are violent movies and video games; gross-out comedies; YouTube pranks, stunts and fails; naked and nearly naked women; and a bit of sports, especially the UFC. In other words, what this demographic wants is entertainment that comes with a near-toxic level of testosterone. Teen fiction rarely, if ever, delivers what boys want.

Teenage girls seem to get exactly what they want in teen fiction. As previously mentioned, teen fiction for girls is almost entirely about life in high school. Half these titles are blatant ripoffs of Twilight and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, while the other half are about affluent or wealthy girls dealing with romance and peer pressure while larking about in designer clothes in various U.S. glamour spots. The Twilight clones give girls action, horror and romance, and the glitzy, trust fund baby literature provides an abundance of wish fulfillment. There are issue-oriented novels for girls but they're almost crowded out by the stuff that screams entertainment value.

These girls are rocking the trust fund baby zombie look.

The literary merit of teen fiction is another question altogether; what's important here is that teenage boys aren't being catered for, and because of that their interest in reading is either stopped in its tracks or never developed. There are two possible solutions. The first is to divide teen sections into boys and girls areas. For various reasons I can't see libraries doing this, but I don't see why bookstores couldn't give this a try. The other alternative is to stop pointing teenage boys towards books written with a teen audience in mind. Teenagers in general can't wait to become adults, but I think teenage boys are even more eager to get to adulthood than girls. So why not feed them adult literature? Why, for instance, shouldn't a 15-year-old boy be reading one of Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels? They're no more raunchy or violent than what he's seeing online, and they're far more likely to get him in love with reading than a sociologically accurate story about a boy coping with a parent's divorce/death/alcoholism/hoarding problem/debilitating karaoke addiction. There's a ton of adult literature out there that boys would lap up, but no one's directing them towards it.

Once upon a time the rambunctious tastes of teenage boys were very well served. That time was the 1920s and 30s, the heyday of the pulp novel magazine. There were dozens and dozens of magazines that covered every conceivable red-blooded genre and they were hugely successful, with some magazines selling a million copies per month. These magazines weren't specifically aimed at teenage boys, but boys made up a large percentage of the readership. And the pulps weren't a literary wasteland: writers as diverse as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Raymond Chandler and Arthur C. Clarke wrote for the pulps, and there are few post-WW II American writers who don't credit the pulps with getting them interested in reading and writing. My love of reading probably stems from an encounter with the pulps at a very early age. In the mid-1960s Bantam began reprinting the Doc Savage pulp novels with stunning covers done by James Bama. My dad started reading them as an exercise in nostalgia. I saw him reading one and demanded that he read it out loud. Doc Savage was a two-fisted superhero who traveled the world punishing evildoers with the help of his eccentric sidekicks. The body count was usually very high. I never read another Hardy Boys novel after my first Doc. And somewhere around the age of fourteen I discovered my father's stash of James Bond novels and I never read another Doc Savage; in fact, it was about that time I stopped reading anything that was "age appropriate." The covers shown below should explain why I gave up on Tom and Frank.
                                                  

There is no contemporary equivalent of pulp magazines, and that's probably not helping the cause of getting teenage boys to read. There's no way to getting the pulp magazine business going again, but it's certainly possible to encourage teenage boys to check out the adult fiction writers who have a pulpy flavour, whether it's the writing team of Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child or Elmore Leonard. And there are teen fiction writers who do manage to deliver the goods for teenage boys, one of the best being Melvin Burgess. His novel Bloodtide has tremendous literary quality as well as more ferocity than a rabid Tasmanian devil. My review of it is here.

Book Review: The Prone Gunman (1981) by Jean-Patrick Manchette

The most pleasing thing about The Prone Gunman is how thoroughly Manchette deconstructs and warps the traditional crime thriller. One way he does this is to strip his novel right down to the studs. Characters are described in a sentence or two, the plot rushes forward constantly, there's a minimum of extraneous commentary or description, and the action is brutal, frequent and described in the bluntest terms. This is a thriller with all the window dressing stripped away, and once that's done the absurdities and cliches of the genre become very apparent. A lot of pulp crime novels from the 1950s and '60s were lean and tough (Richard Stark in his Parker novels took this style to a brilliant level), but Manchette adds a dash of existential despair to the mix that makes his novels something special. The previous Manchette novel I read was Fatale (review here), and in that one the deadly heroine eventually seems to crack up under the strain of being exposed to the scheming of the bourgeoisie. In The Prone Gunman the protagonist, Martin Terrier, has a more peculiar breakdown.

The plot is a carefully thought out collection of cliches. Terrier is a professional assassin working for a shadowy company or organization that may or may not be part of the French government. Terrier decides he wants to retire from the business and goes back to his hometown in the south of France where he hopes to reconnect with his teenage sweetheart. Not surprisingly, the company Terrier works for decides it doesn't want him to retire, it wants him dead. Terrier and his girlfriend, Anne, go on the run and the bodies start to pile up along with plot twists by the score. There's really nothing original in the story, except for Terrier's reaction once the twists and betrayals reach epidemic proportions. He becomes a mute. It isn't a ruse, he actually loses the will to speak after one rather painful betrayal. It's a bizarre development, but in a loopy way it makes sense. Heroes in this genre traditionally take a tremendous amount of mental and physical abuse; they're shot at and chased; live in fear of betrayal or discovery; suffer torture; live double lives; and are always looking over their shoulder. Somehow none of this seems to have any lasting effects on the hero. At the end of the novel they pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and walk into the sunset, all ready for their next adventure. Terrier has a nervous breakdown. Who wouldn't? Terrier has been exposed to all kinds of horrors, shocks and violence, and his reaction amounts to a declaration of existential fright at what's been happening to and around him. It's a startling plot twist, but it points out the absurdity of the mentally invulnerable action hero whose psyche can bear up under any amount of pressure.

Another cliche of the crime/spy thriller genre is that the hero must have a romantic or sexual partner. If it's a wife or girlfriend she usually exists in the story to be captured or threatened and thus complicate the hero's mission. Sometimes the female characters are just around for the sex, which gives the story some sexytime fun and confirms the hero's hetero status. But the one thing that's certain is that the hero will always be paired off with an attractive, even gorgeous, woman who will think he's just great in and out of bed. It's almost an ironclad rule for the genre; no chunky or spotty girls need apply. Manchette completely destroys this cliche. Terrier eventually loses his girlfriend because, well, he's a complete dud in the sack. It's a witty riff on one of the most tired conventions of the genre.

Manchette also has time to rubbish one of the sillier aspects of crime novels: the pointless obsession with technical details; in particular, the fascination with name-branding weaponry. Any crime or thriller writer worth his salt likes (insists) on giving his readers the names and specs for every gun that appears in the story. So when a hero or villain produces a weapon we're immediately told it's, say, a Heckler & Koch MP5 with flash suppressor using a 7.62mm round. Who cares? The important thing is that some guy is armed and dangerous. For all I know Heckler & Koch could be an Austrian ventriloquism act. Manchette itemizes every bit of weaponry and extends the cliche to name-branding weapon accessories. Weapon name-branding exists in thrillers to add some verisimilitude, but it seems ludicrous to add a dollop of reality to stories that are, by and large, as far-fetched as any fantasy novel. One example: the uber-successful Jack Reader thrillers (my review of  Worth Dying For here) by Lee Child are a feast of tech specs, but the plots are relentlessly improbable.

The subversion of thriller cliches goes on right to the end of The Prone Gunman. Unlike the vast majority of thriller heroes, Terrier isn't allowed to walk off into the sunset or enjoy a warrior's noble death. He ends up brain-damaged, living in his hometown, a figure of fun for the patrons of the bar where he works as a waiter. It's the most inglorious possible finish for the hero of a thriller. At the very end we see that Terrier was nothing more than a tool, like a Heckler & Koch, used by his masters until he was broken, and then tossed away. If you have a deep love for the conventions of modern thrillers you might find this book a mite upsetting, but if you like to see literary tropes given a good kicking...enjoy.

Book Review: Butcher's Moon (1974) By Richard Stark

In 1962 Donald E. Westlake, writing as Richard Stark, introduced the character of Parker, a professional thief who is as remorseless as he is efficient. This first novel was The Hunter (filmed as Point Blank with Lee Marvin) and it probably marks the beginning of the modern American crime novel. Prior to The Hunter crime novels were largely about detectives and detection, and stories about criminals usually ended with the crooks caught or killed. Stark changed all that. Parker always lives to steal another day, and he usually leaves a high body count in his wake. And Parker's no Robin Hood; he steals for himself, and if his accomplices are caught or killed that's their bad luck. Parker isn't just hardboiled, he's frozen in carbonite.

One of the chief pleasures of the Parker novels is the plotting. The stories begin at a dead run and then rarely pause for a breath. Parker and his confederates always plan their heists to the last detail, but then something usually goes awry, and Parker ends up avoiding pursuers or doing some pursuing himself. Sometimes he's doing both at the same time. Despite the breathlessness of the plotting, Stark takes care to add some depth and shading to even minor characters, and he can also add humour here and there; in Butcher's Moon, in the middle of a casino heist, two thieves and the casino operator they're robbing suddenly have a ridiculously passionate discussion about health food and fitness.

It's easy to see the influence Stark had on Elmore Leonard, who began his crime writing career just as Stark was winding down the Parker series. Leonard's plots are also about criminal plots that go off the rails, his heroes are often Parker-like, and Leonard's novels always feature humorous, parenthetical moments. And Leonard in turn has influenced a host of other writers and filmmakers (step forward Mr Tarantino). The character of Parker has also been reborn in Lee Child's Jack Reacher thrillers. The Reacher character is definitely on the right side of the law, but his ruthlessness, his skill, his matter-of-fact approach to danger is pure Parker.

In Butcher's Moon, Parker and his frequent partner Alan Grofield travel to a small city in Ohio to reclaim a stash of money they'd hidden there years before. The money is missing and the finger of blame points towards the head of the local crime syndicate. Parker wants his money and applies pressure to the crime boss, but that ends with Grofield being wounded and captured. Parker then assembles a gang of thieves he's worked with in previous novels and they begin an all-out assault on the syndicate's men and businesses. Things get very exciting and very bloody. 

Butcher's Moon, written in 1974, marks the end of "old" Parker. In 1999 Stark resumed writing Parker novels and these very definitely gave us a "new" Parker. New Parker is even better than old Parker. Old Parker novels occasionally suffer from stilted tough-guy dialogue, and the depiction of women can be summed up by the fact that they're usually referred to as "broads" or "dames." Also, the plots of some of the old Parkers sometimes bordered on the farfetched, straying out of the crime genre and into action/adventure. Butcher's Moon suffers a bit from this last problem, but in other respects it's a bridge to new Parker. The dialogue is free of cliche and there's no blatant sexism.

New Parker began with the aptly-titled Comeback, and in all respects Stark's writing is better. The plots are more unpredictable and believable, the dialogue is leaner and devoid of cliches, and Parker is made more human, but no less implacable and lethal, by the addition of a steady girlfriend. The best of the new Parkers is Breakout, which features both a prison escape and a heist. I suspect Stark brought back Parker because he felt a bit miffed that Leonard, Child, and others were getting rich in a genre that was largely his creation.

Check out the trailer for Point Blank below, but be warned that while it's superb, it makes significant departures from the book.

Book Review: Worth Dying For by Lee Child

Jack really missed his morning coffee

The guy on the right is not Jack Reacher, the hero of Lee Child's ultra-successful novels, but it might as well be, considering how implausible, invulnerable and unstoppable he is. And that's what makes Reacher fun. Child has put a patina of realism over a character who really belongs in a comic book or a pulp novel from the 1930s.

This time out Reacher is thumbing his way through rural Nebraska where he runs afoul of the Duncans, a local clan of nasties who rule their corner of the state with an iron fist and a squad of beefy ex-football players. Much violence ensues, Reacher rights wrongs, and the true evil of the Duncans is revealed. The plotting is tight and fast, heads are broken and bodies pulped in various thrilling ways, and the tension is constant. In sum, Child and Reacher are back on form.

The last Reacher adventure, 61 Hours, was a tiny letdown. There was minimal mayhem, and Reacher seemed to spend a lot of time whining about how cold it was in South Dakota. Of course, one of the pleasures of a Reacher novel involves spotting Lee Child's unfamiliarity with North American culture. Child is a Brit, and it shows when he has Reacher refer to old people as "wrinklies" and gamblers as "punters." And if he thinks it's insanely cold in South Dakota, he should try Edmonton in January. Child, like many Europeans, also seems fascinated by how outsized everything is in America. He always has most of his characters driving big cars, which he describes in loving detail, and many of Reacher's adventures seem to take place in the wide open spaces west of the Mississippi.

Child's errant Briticisms are only the most minor of glitches. He remains the best thriller writer going, and this despite the fact that his hero, Reacher, is so damn ridiculous. Reacher is part Sherlock Holmes, part The Man With No Name, part Bruce Lee, not to mention a loner, a drifter, a two-fisted existentialist, and a coffee addict. Yes, Reacher is basically a cartoon character or something from a first person shooter video game, but Child never lets the action slow down enough for us to fully appreciate that Reacher is bonkers. In Worth Dying For Child makes sure that virtually every paragraph is either moving the story forward, revealing or deepening a mystery, creating anxiety, or describing some violence. And it doesn't hurt that Child knows his way around a sentence. This is how thrillers should be plotted.

This latest novel also benefits from Reacher not being given a love interest; although it would be more accurate to say a sex partner. In previous novels Child has put Reacher in bed with an interchangeable selection of female FBI agents or cops. and these scenes are always deadly. For one thing the plot always comes to a screeching halt for them, and for another, Child only seems to have included them to assuage any doubts we might have about Reacher's sexuality.

I hope Child keeps Reacher as nutty as a fruitcake, but I'd like to see him give up the Wild West plots with Reacher riding into town and defending the settlers against the land barons. He's done at least three of those now and there's a certain sameness to them. Put Reacher in Europe for a change, where he can enjoy a really strong cup of coffee.