This book is about a detective on the streets of LA who takes a job from an old disabled military vet with two young daughters. The general is being blackmailed and this private detective is hired to figure out what is going on and make this all go away. Seems simple enough, right?
I picked up this book because it was on the list of 1001 books to read before you die. (I will save the trouble of going around looking for an accurate list. Click the link.) This was from the core list which hasn’t changed and the list itself has been changing about every four years. Does this book belong on the list? Absolutely.
First I want to talk about the ratings that it has been getting for the woman beating and misogyny in the text. There have been some bad ratings based on that and the fact that it’s really not as good as the ones that have followed in the noir genre. Lots of art and media has not really aged well. Lolita by Valdmir Nabokov is a great example of that. There are so many books that are a reflection of the reality of the times, especially because the book was written by an ex oil executive (older rich white dude).
But the fact of the matter is…It is written really well. The way that that the scenes are described are incredibly visual. I could imagine, every bit of rain that feel and the glistening glare of guns. The one thing I couldn’t visualize was the main character and I think that is intentional. I rarely like the waxing and waning of certain characters in other books. I read one book where the protagonist did a page and a half of thinking and didn’t do anything. In my mind, I was imagining her standing frozen in place for several minutes…at which point someone should act like that’s weird, not like the world froze Saved by the bell style.
This book did to crime fiction what Jane Austen did to romance, when you look back on the tropes that litter today’s romance (enemies to lovers, friends to lovers, matchmatching, etc.), we see them now as played out because people have done them before.
As for the plot, it is very convoluted and confusing but that is probably because I listened to it and didn’t read it from the page. There are so many other complicated twists that made it hard to follow the narrative. The one thing I did love was the reveals. And there were so many of them. I had no idea what was going to happen next. The indication of a good thriller to me is the twist.
Our main detective is anything but a nice guy but he doesn’t try to be. The relatable factor goes up when you realize that there is nothing about him that you are supposed to like. He drinks too much, he hits women and he just generally sucks but he sticks by his word and gets the job done. Since this there have been thousands of iterations of the hardened detective trope (Luther, Broadchurch, Columbo, etc), even the show House takes that and moves it into the medical sphere.
So what are the takeaways from reading something this old and iconic? Take it for what it is. It was written in a different time of society and at the end of the day, it paved the road for a lot of the media that we (I) enjoy today.
Have you read anything from the 1001 books to read before you die list?
Reading Reckless : Rants and Raves 