David Goodis couldn’t find a publisher today. His novel, The Wounded and The Slain, (Hard Case Crime, 2007) is a mess. The storylines don’t run together, the dialogue is sometimes stilted, and he relies heavily on internal monologues to advance the story. In this day and age, an agent or publisher would toss it on the slush pile and forget about it. It’s enough to make one wonder exactly what kind of novels are being passed on, because, despite all its faults, The Wounded and the Slain is an admirable piece of work.
The story focuses on James and Cora Bevan, a
Cora’s storyline is another story. As the book opens, she is struggling with a buried trauma that makes her unable to respond to her husband’s advances, but also makes her uncontrollably attracted to certain other men. Any reader who can’t figure out what her terrible secret is the first time it comes up should be checked for a pulse. It doesn’t add much to the book, which is really about James.
Goodis’ habit of telling instead of showing can be annoying, especially since he can write a good scene. At his best, Goodis is cinematic. One scene where James Bevan stumbles blind drunk through a massive brawl that has broken out in a dive bar, is vivid and funny. It’s too bad Goodis doesn’t do it more often. A reader may find himself tempted to skip ahead a few pages when in the midst of one of the many extended internal monologues in which the characters engage.
Still, The Wounded and The Slain works because Goodis was such a good storyteller that the flaws in his writing don’t take away from the narrative, and sometimes provide a little bit of charm. Hard Case has found another winner for its growing list of reprints.
Your Wednesday paperback cover this week is a Beacon original from one Orrie Hitt, who turned out a huge number of sleaze paperbacks. Unlike writers like Lawrence Block or Charles Willeford, who also worked writing sleaze novels, no one, as far as I can tell, has claimed that Hitt wrote anything of lasting importance. His books did, however, sport some truly sordid covers.
Secrets. They bind people who want nothing to do with each other together. They drive people who need each other apart. They bring uncertainty and guilt with each new day and, in the end, they are always impossible to keep.
In Soul Patch, (Bleak House, 2007) Reed Farrel Coleman’s follow up to the critically acclaimed The James Deans, private-eye cum wine merchant Moe Prager finds himself swallowed by secrets. He is haunted by the knowledge that he let his wife’s older brother slip away from him years ago when he had been hired to find him. Moe and his father-in-law, the only other person who knows, are engaged in a contest of wills, to see who breaks first.
While Moe is preoccupied with this secret, which threatens his marriage, his old friend, Larry McDonald, NYPD’s chief of detectives, comes around with a tape and asks Moe to listen to it. Moe does. It’s an illicit recording of a small time drug suspect offering to talk about the murder of a real drug kingpin who died years ago. Moe doesn’t get it, and when McDonald asks Moe to help try and cover up the fact that some old cops were the dead kingpin’s payroll back in the day Moe refuses. When McDonald turns up dead of an apparent suicide Moe no longer has the option of saying no. An offer of information regarding his long missing brother-in-law from Queens District Attorney Richard Fishbein, makes sure he stays motivated.
Coleman brings a depth of feeling to his PI that is often missing in the genre. Moe is a complex character pulled in many different directions by conflicting emotions. Boredom, loyalty, fear, anger and regret all combine in Moe’s breast to drive him forward. He is a different breed than fictional investigators like Lew Archer, or Philip Marlowe, who are largely absent from their own stories. Moe is tortured, but not in the clichéd drunken private investigator way. He’s made some mistakes and had some bad luck, but he’s a family man, not a brooding loner, whose comfort is found at the bottom of a bottle. He is deeply concerned about how his actions, and the secrets he is dredging up, will affect those around him.
Coleman has written a fine, elegiac novel, brimming with regret and sadness. Moe is a melancholy man and he is surrounded by a melancholy
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It is writing like that which keeps Soul Patch from being just another private eye story.
Coleman’s novel is more character driven than plot driven, which is fortunate, since his plot in this outing is predictable. There are no last minute surprises, but that’s all right. Readers will come for the mystery, but stay for the company.
