Ashe resigned from the Chicago Police Department when he wouldn't go along with a conspiracy to cover up a racially-motivated shooting -- and the significant settlement he received from the CPD helps him pick and choose his cases. Initially he's reluctant to help find Tinsley Gerrigan, a twenty-something free spirit with a habit of going under the radar now and again and the money to do it. But he decides to do so anyway although it's not too long before he finds out that the important truths of the case remain Unspoken, and the secrets could prove deadly for him in the novel of that name. When Tinsley's boyfriend -- a young African-American man lifting himself out of the poverty and criminal connections of his family background -- is found dead, the secrets swirl more deeply but no less dangerously.
Smith does a good job of setting his scenes in Chicago's different and divided neighborhoods and giving the reader a sense of place. Ashe is clearly cut from the tough-guy detective mold and Smith sets him up with a background of his own as part of a well-off African-American Chicago family partially -- but only partially -- insulated from that city's troubled racial past and present. He has deft enough hand at humor to make Ashe's quip game worth the trouble.
But the novel suffers from uneven pacing and a cast of characters that expands too quickly at just the right plot point. As he describes the Gerrigan's wealth, he lays the hyperbolic comparisons on thickly enough to become repetitive, and at several points the prose clunks noticeably. There's a side plot with a defrocked abusive priest that has literally no bearing on the rest of the story and is just a slightly gamy waste of space. Ashe's quasi-legal enforcer backup "Mechanic" owes a lot to Spenser's Hawk in Robert B. Parker's novels. You could even make a case that Unspoken borrows a lot from Spenser's debut The Godwulf Manuscript, with a missing heiress pulled into illegal and dangerous doings via connections with subversive political groups. Smith throws those connections into the story almost out of nowhere rather than grow them organically as Parker did, but in either event the plot is common enough to tough-guy detective fiction to make a true plotlifting unlikely.
Ashe Cayne offers loads of possibilities as a character. Chicago's racial history belies the idea of racism as an exclusively southern phenomenon and the way he mixes that situation with the privilege of wealth and solid connections with both cops and criminals could bring interesting conundrums his way. A second novel is set for release in August 2021 and if Smith can smooth out his prose, ditch the tendency to parachute drop pivotal characters into the story quite late in the game and either leave out or make relevant Ashe's habit of vigilantism, then it might be a good step into an intriguing series.
In that sense, 1973's The Quick and the Dead sums up in one story what L'Amour has said in many previous ones. Duncan McKaskel, his wife Susanna and their son Tom are traveling west to make a life they will not be able to make for themselves in the established structures and cities of the East. But they maintain too many connections to Eastern ways and values that will not help them at all as they confront Native Americans and outlaws. The first have a culture and civilization Duncan does not understand and the second are simply predators on two legs -- but both have too many sharp edges for the novice to handle safely.
Fortunately for the McKaskels, they encounter a drifter named Con Vallian, who stops at their fire one night for coffee and for some reason even he doesn't quite understand, decides to help them navigate the uncharted and potentially dangerous new world they've entered. He grows to like them, admiring the courage all three of them show in not backing down when they confront trouble. Vallian is certainly part of what the McKaskels need to survive their first months in the West, but it remains to be seen if he's enough to keep them -- and him -- alive.
Quick has a curiously cursory feel, as though L'Amour were otherwise occupied when setting the story to paper. It's got a lot of interesting ideas scattered through the narrative but really never spends much time picking them up and looking them over. The lessons L'Amour would like to teach and commentary he would like to make are visible, but only just and they need more excavation than they're given. For example, on the one hand we've the McKaskels, a group of people shaped by a civilization featuring the rule of law. On the other we've the rustlers and outlaws who chase them, adhering only to the law of taking what they want when they want through the power of the gun and respecting none of the values the McKaskels are used to. Bridging them is Vallian: He too seems to set store by the right to have person and property unmolested by others, but he'll use naked force if necessary to preserve them and in whatever level is necessary to see his will done. When confronted by a superior force who wants to attack people to whom he owes nothing, which way might he fall? Quick may want us to think it asks that question, but it never does so seriously. Although L'Amour gives Vallian a handful of lines appreciative of Susanna's beauty and spirit, he's never really presented as any serious threat to take or tempt her from Duncan. Nor does there seem to be much doubt that he will take their side rather than abandon them.
It may be that expecting a Louis L'Amour Western to explore questions like that is asking too much, but L'Amour never shied away from commentary on the human condition or consideration of larger issues within the context of his genre. The Quick and the Dead goes far enough to hint at these kinds of thoughts and ideas, but doesn't pursue them enough to make it as interesting as it could have been.
No comments:
Post a Comment