Library Limelights 151

James Crumley. The Wrong Case. 1975. USA: First Vintage Books Edition, 1986.

Crumley's not for the faint of heart or weak sensibilities. It's a long time since I read one of his works; Crumley was critically celebrated by his peers as an exemplar of the hard-boiled private-eye genre. This book introduced one of his recurring characters: Milton Milodragovitch, better known as Milo, the narrator. He's a terrible excuse for a P.I., conducting sleazy divorce work when he's not drinking at his favourite dump of a bar. And even when he is. Then Helen comes to his office, he's smitten, and the search for her missing brother spirals out of control in the not-so-sleepy western mountain town. Helen comes across as a total flake ‒ each to his own ‒ and turns out she has history with Milo's best friend Dick.

Milo doesn't mind getting beat up or shooting a few people; moralizing or much self-reflection are not something he practises regularly. The pages are filled with pained alcoholics, jaded bartenders, hippy remnants, and drug dealers that the one stalwart cop in town, Jamison, tries to manage if not arrest. Despite Milo's pointless, depressing life amidst a bevy of equally self-destructive pals, Crumley reaches poetic altitudes in character and environment descriptions. Dark, but darkly entertaining. One of Crumley's books is enough to last a long time.

One-liners:

Age and sorrow, those were my only assets, my largest liabilities. (4)

Her pain and worry was real, and it dangled between us like a frayed empty sleeve. (14)

Dick had never recovered from a strong dose of college basketball. (29)

Sometimes I thought that I had to either play father or son to every drunk in town. (180)

Rules of engagement:

In the book it says to let the client talk, to listen carefully and take copious notes, and making certain that when you do speak, to be sure to reveal your perception and intelligence, your deep understanding of human behavior, and that way the client will have the utmost confidence in your abilities, etc. But I always seemed to do it this other way: stagger them with wit, ply them with romance and whiskey sours, and convince them that I wouldn't be able to eat that night unless they paid me a large retainer. Sometimes it worked. (12-13)

Renewing the rules:

Two hours later, which I spent alternating between the steam room and the sauna at the Elks Club, with occasional forays into the whirlpool and the bar, I made it to the office, slightly tipsy but functional, red as a boiled lobster. The dark glasses I'd borrowed from the Elks Club bartender felt silly. I left them on my desk, then wandered down the hall to harass my cousin the dentist for a heavy vitamin shot. He wasn't there. That's how I found out it was Sunday. I was back in the office, hitting the bottle when Helen came in the open door. 

"Lady, I get double-time on Sundays and national holidays," I said, "and it started forty-five minutes ago." (69-70)

A pathetic man:

Once again, I had the feeling that Nickie was condescending to me, that there was some sort of antagonism seeping out of him. But I had always known that Nickie was unhappy behind all his smiles and glad-hands. As he stood up, trying to look calm and self-assured, his shoulders slumped beneath the weight of his coat, his neck bowed beneath the weight of his dyed hair, and his fingers kneaded belches out of his sunken chest. He couldn't hide the fatigue of a long life of being nobody, a fatigue I understood more than I wanted to. To be childlike might keep a man young, but to be treated like a child makes him old too soon. (123)

Leighton Gage. Blood of the Wicked. USA: Soho Press, 2008.

The land wars in Brazil are the background of this political thriller. When a bishop is assassinated in the city of Cascatas, elite Federal Police officer Mario Silva and his nephew Hector Costa are sent to solve it fast. Instead, there are too many candidates and no evidence; interviews with local priests are fruitless. Confusing the issue is the murderous revenge cycle between large landowners and the poor whose right to private but unused land is ignored by government. A brutal attack on members of the Landless Workers League finds Silva and Costa facing the corrupt power of local cop Colonel Ferraz and the arrogance of the Landowners Association; the latter employ capangas ‒ hired guns and bodyguards ‒ to protect their rich coffee, sugarcane, or tobacco properties. Some priests work quietly against the decadent system in sympathy with workers and desperate, drug-addicted street kids.

Sound dismal? Right. Life is cheap in the Brazilian third-world countryside; I lost count of the bodies in the general carnage. A few scenes to turn your stomach. In the end, the federal policemen hardly solve anything. But their integrity holds the story together. Events unspool of their own volition to conclusions that make sense, if not satisfaction. A morality tale of sorts where no-one is innocent, where evil perpetuates itself. Gage wrote several more novels featuring Silva and Costa before his death in 2013. [An off of writer]

One-liners:

If you're only willing to pay peanuts, what you're going to get is monkeys. (60)

"If he was an elevator operator, you'd have to bribe him to let you off on the right floor." (106)

"What's going to happen now is in God's hands, not yours." (209)

Orders coming from the top:

"You're my man for criminal matters, and this is clearly a criminal matter. Put a stop to it," the director said, just as if Silva could, and should. "I have no sympathy for Pillar and his crowd, but we can't just stand idly by while people go around killing people. Where the hell do those landowners think they are, Dodd's City?" 

Silva though Sampaio probably meant Dodge City, but maybe not. Maybe there actually was a place called Dodd's City. 

"The minister's going to call the Governor of São Paulo,"the director went on, "and he'll talk him into requesting our help in the investigation of the bishop's murder. And while you're there, you'd better sniff around and see what you can learn about who killed that activist. It might help to keep Pillar off our backs." 

While you're there? Silva didn't like the sound of that. (17)

Favela conditions:

Inside, the shack smelled of lamp oil, sweat, and human excrement. Arnaldo remembered that places like these didn't have toilets. They dug holes in a corner and used that. covering the holes with boards, sometimes sprinkling lime if they could afford it. They'd fetch their water from a community spigot. Electricity, if any, would come from an illegal tap. 

There were no windows. In the dim light, he could make out that the interior was nothing more than one small room. Three children, the oldest about six or seven, and the youngest no more than two, lay entangled on the bed like a litter of cats. The bed was made of jute coffee bags, sewn together and stuffed with something. There was a single, three-legged stool, and there were three wooden crates, but no other furniture. One of the crates supported a small black-and-white television set with a rabbit-ear antenna. (202)

One theory:

"Do you remember the last sermon Dom Felipe delivered in your old church?" 

Gaspar nodded. 

"'The Blood of the Wicked,' he called it. It concerned the murder of Azevedo, the league activist. He asked people to come forward. Not unlike what Orlando Muniz is doing, don't you agree?" 

"No, Father, I don't agree. The bishop, to my knowledge, didn't mention money." 

"Well, that's true. He didn't." 

"I gather you disagree with Father Francisco." 

"I most certainly do. The landowners of Cascatas are pillars of the community. None of them would stoop to violence." 

"There's just one thing wrong with that argument, Father." 

"What's that, Chief Inspector?" 

"Judging by what happened to Acevedo, one of them already did." (231-2)

Katherena Vermette. The Break. Toronto: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2016.

Her first novel for an astonishing author. Winner of three prestigious awards, it's not so much the content as it is Vermette's exceptional, warm, powerful writing. Winnipeg's North End, blue collar Jewish enclave when I lived there, now has a considerable Metis/native community. Half a dozen women of different professions move a traumatic story forward; their lives are circumscribed by their mutual family relations. Young Emily is the victim of a hate crime; her experience is revealed through the voices in turn of her mother, grandmother, great-grandmother (Kookom), her aunts, her friend. And Emily herself ‒ the shining, naive tween.

Seldom have I read such empathy .. realistic, empathetic lives. The matriarchal setting is not accidental, reflecting native tradition. Urban life does not erase the need to re-charge on happy visits to "the bush," instilling the old ways in younger generations. A policeman new to the job, Tommy, questions his half-breed status: who is he exactly? He learns to deal with gangs, drug addicts, and casual, unthinking racism. But the women are together despite their individual vulnerabilities. Almost every line in this book is touching, important, quotable. Vermette is an outstanding Canadian talent.

One-liners:

She's got balls where I got only complicated girlie grey feelings about everything. (39)

My mother is a big believer in stating the obvious. (179)

Sometimes his attention is so nice, it's like all the cool kids saying hi to her at the same time. (214-5)

"Kids that are messed with get messed up." (298)

Louisa:

My workday wears on, but I can't concentrate. Instead, Friday afternoon stretches out in front of me — my files are not updated, and calls are not returned. Instead, I just watch the pink sky outside my office window. Lester is right, it is going to snow. The clouds seem to swell and give everything a long, dark shadow. Downtown blurs. 

I look at my files, all the poor, young children already with epic stories, their mothers mean or sad. The empty space where their fathers are supposed to be. Everything blurs. I can't seem to be a social worker right now, I think. I can only be a left woman. (36-7)

Lorraine:

When you were born, it was like that. A deep breath. Before you came, I was so messed up and didn't think I even wanted you. I watched your aunty with little Louisa and thought I couldn't do that, all those things, not me. My hands didn't know how to wrap a little baby so tight in a blanket or tell when the bottle was warm enough. My heart had no room for all the space you would need. I didn't think I could do it. 

But when you came, I only had to look at you, and I knew. There wasn't even a feeling or maybe there's just not a word big enough for all that feeling. There was so much it filled me all the way up. It was something more than knowing. More. (81)

Cheryl:

She should make a painting for Emily. Emily with her baby face, Emily stronger than she knows. Cheryl will put a strong wolf-skin coat, black with only touches of grey, around her little granddaughter to keep her safe. 

Cheryl breathes out and tries to give her granddaughter strength. Wolves teach humility — they teach that we are all in this together, all a part of the same whole. If something happens to one of them, they all feel it. Cheryl breathes out deep and warm, breathes in Emily's pain and gives her back all the strength she has. (118)

Zegwan:

"Does it hurt, my granddaughter?" he asks in their language. 

"Not bad," she replies in English. She is too shy to speak their language to him. He'll know she is forgetting it, losing what she has always known. Her tongue doesn't turn the words over like it used to. They come out rough and bitten. 

Her Moshoom nods though because he knows, and stays on the floor holding her hand. (211)

Kookom (Flora):

I remember I am safe from Charlie, no more Charlie, Charlie long gone and long dead. 

Then I lie back down and miss that love. I miss Charlie and feel sorry about how broken he was after I left him. How he fell apart and died too young. I think of how much he loved me. I think of him and an old wind flows through my broken body, inside that place where Charlie had been, where he seeded our children and made me feel all of his love. I sweat hot for that kind of love, the kind I only knew once.