Books: Blaze, Quarry, Bride

Reviews

Richard Bachman’s (Stephen King’s) Blaze is better than I expected for an old trunk novel brushed off, revised, and set up to benefit the Haven Foundation, which supports freelance artists down on their luck. But, like his The Colorado Kid, this is crime fiction, not horror, so don’t go into it misled by the spooky-looking cover art. The story’s about Clay “Blaze” Blaisdell, a slow but not bad-hearted man whose con-artist partner recently died, leaving him hard-put to support himself. In an attempt to fulfill his partner’s big plans for one great heist, Blaze decides to kidnap a wealthy couple’s infant son. The story flashes back and forth between Blaze’s present and his past, showing how he became what he is today and making him a surprisingly sympathetic character — or maybe not so surprising, since creating sympathetic characters is, in my opinion, Stephen King’s greatest strength. King deliberately fudges the time period in which Blaze takes place, leaving it in the same kind of postmodern past of Lynch’s Blue Velvet. All in all, it’s an enjoyably retro-flavored novel, much, much better than his recent Cell.

Stephen King had considered Blaze for the Hard Case Crime collection, but it wasn’t hardboiled enough, although The Colorado Kid wasn’t, either. The Last Quarry by Max Allan Collins is, however. It’s a slim volume, like all the Hard Cases, and it features a new cover by James Bond movie poster artist Robert McGinnis in that old cheezy voyeuristic tradition that might make you blush a little to read it in public. The novel brings the hitman Quarry out of retirement for one last job. I’ve never read the Quarry novels, but this one stands alone quite well and has everything you’d expect from hardboiled fiction — a tough-talking, ruthless protagonist with a certain sense of honor; loose floozies and sweet librarians; corrupt businessmen; and the inevitable double-crosses and deaths. I was struck by two things. First, how strange it is to read hardboiled-style narrative with clear references to contemporary times (”The building across the way mirrored this one, had probably been designed by the same architect and built by the same outfit somewhere after the turn of the century — 19th century, that is. Fuck, I was old, having to keep track of goddamn centuries….” [p. 105]). Second, that although Quarry’s not especially PC, he’s more so than, say, Mike Hammer. It must be a delicate balancing act for an author, creating a realistically contemporary protagonist who’s ruthless and hardboiled without being a complete asshole.

Finally, The Deadly Bride: And 21 of the Year’s Finest Crime and Mystery Stories! is a nice collection edited by Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg. Unfortunately, I’d read five of the stories in other venues — “The Deadly Bride” by Sharan Newman, “Interlude at Duane’s” by F. Paul Wilson, “The Abelard Sanction” by David Morrell, “Cain Was Innocent” by Simon Brett, and “Lost Causes” by Anne Perry — but the others were new, including a new Peter Tremayne story about the Celtic law student Sister Fedelma, set in a fictional alternate Ireland — I’d read a previous story about her in another mystery collection. I noticed as I read that contemporary mystery/crime fiction may be as much about preventing crime as committing or solving it; writers really need to struggle to find new takes on a genre that’s been pretty well-explored over the last century! But some of these stories are really good — evil person that I am, I liked the amoral hero of “Little Sins” by Mike MacLean, the dark humor of “Low Drama” by Kim Harrington, and the wicked last laugh of the dying hardboiled novelist in “The Last Interview” by Craig McDonald.

drupagliassotti @ July 11, 2007