This third crime thriller by Wm Stage is a refreshing change of pace in both setting and characters, with a strong feel of gritty reality. Contemporary society’s schisms and Americans’ careless assumptions and prejudices are on full display in this well-paced thriller, which puts St Louis special process server Francis Lenihan in the precarious position of having to break the law if he wants a devious serial killer to get justice. The city has as many currents as the mighty Mississippi flowing alongside it, and some are just as dangerous.
River City is one of the many nicknames for St Louis, Missouri. Its location on the Mississippi River plays a prominent role in the story, as a good bit of the action takes place in a homeless encampment that has sprung up in the riverside park surrounding the city’s most famous manmade attraction – the Gateway Arch. Stage doesn’t neglect the city’s troubled racial history, either, notably the 2014 death of Michael Brown by police in nearby Ferguson. That event created the backdrop of interracial resentments, fear and anger for this story’s opening.
The acquittal of a former police officer accused of murdering a 24-year-old black man has just been announced when Lenihan walks out of the Civil Courts Building to find himself in the midst of an incipient riot. Caught up in the melee, he’s rounded up with everyone else, and has to sit in jail until he can be processed.
Lenihan’s views on this and other examples of racial discord are not easy to pigeonhole. He seems to be on first one side, then the other. Maybe at all times he’s simply on the side that will give him the quickest path out of it. What I particularly valued in this book is that, through Lenihan and the people he drinks with, you hear the full range of attitudes about race and social issues, for better and worse, although some of the worst opinions aren’t tolerated.
In the US, process servers work under various auspices – Lenihan works for the sheriff’s office – delivering legal papers to people involved in landlord disputes, divorces, court cases and the like. As you can imagine, although a process server has no authority to arrest people, the recipients of these notices are often not happy to see him. Lenihan goes about his day-to-day work during the course of the story and how he works and how the people served react to him, are an interesting window on a behind-the-scenes job.
Lenihan receives a call from the physician father of a young man named Austin who’s been found murdered. Lenihan’s business card was in the dead man’s pocket. The father wants to know more about Austin’s last days and, desperate, asks Lenihan to investigate. Reluctantly, he agrees. That’s what takes him to the homeless encampment. Austin was a drug user, living on the fringes, and Lenihan hopes to pick up his trail there.
At the camp, Lenihan reconnects with someone he met in jail after the riot, a black preacher named Cleo who’s at the homeless camp looking for someone too – his brother. Through Cleo, Lenihan meets some of the colourful characters who make the camp their home. One man regularly visits, bringing huge vats of soup. Another, called Jesus, washes people’s feet. Many kinds of suffering – mental and physical – are on display, and Lenihan takes a pragmatic view of it all. Chasing down fragments of information of wildly varying reliability about Austin leads in a direction that, in turn, threatens Lenihan himself.
Lenihan’s wife Martha’s family owns an upscale Italian restaurant where she works as a hostess, and she’s a great cook to boot, so all is well on the home front. At least it is until a young man starts stalking one of their young staff members, and Martha’s hot-headed brother turns reflexively to violence to solve the situation. No business serving the public needs the kind of publicity this situation is likely to produce, and Martha begs Lenihan to persuade the stalker to back off. Again, Lenihan agrees and what seems like a straightforward situation turns out not to be.
I liked this book a lot. The setting and characters are fresh and well-developed, and the detailed understanding of the process server’s life grows out of author Stage’s own background as a licensed process server in St Louis.
Also see our review of the author’s 2020 book St Francis of Dogtown.
Floppinfish Pub Co
Kindle/Print
£6.95
CFL Rating: 4 Stars
