Domenic Stansberry’s new noir mystery takes it slow, unravelling in beautiful prose the confounding situation of its protagonist, political ghostwriter SE Reynolds. Stansberry – who hasn’t published a novel in almost a decade – has won numerous prizes including an Edgar Award and a Hammett Prize for his past books, and authored one of CrimeFictionLover reviewer PulpCurry’s top books in 2011, Manifesto for the Dead.
Stansberry isn’t a typical thriller author who keeps the action coming and the pages flying. Instead, Reynolds is caught in a net that ever so slowly tightens around him. The book begins when he’s already on the run, in a desolate part of Southern California, La Bahia, a town worn out and on its last legs, just like the old Hotel La Bahia, destined for the wrecking ball. Why anyone would go to this godforsaken place, willingly, is another mystery, yet it seems someone may have followed him there. Or is his paranoia acting up? Or is it paranoia when people have been chasing you all over the country?
Reynolds’s trouble starts when a New York literary agent calls to persuade him to help out an old friend – Max Seeghurs, another former investigative reporter – who’s supposed to be writing a book about a former New Mexico retreat called Sundial. Sundial was a popular destination for people on the make financially, politically, or in Hollywood to mix and mingle and jack up their fortunes. Sex and drugs too. Alas, Sundial’s owner and his 20-something son both died under dubious circumstances, the retreat closed down, and Seeghurs wants to pull the bandaid off. Expose the rot. But Seeghurs is having trouble pulling the book together; maybe Reynolds can be his manuscript doctor.
Reynolds isn’t keen on this potential assignment because Seeghurs is notoriously difficult to work with. And, because the last time they met up a couple of years back in Miscoulga, Nebraska, Reynolds had an affair with Seeghurs’s wife, now his ex-wife. But Reynolds’s latest candidate is not committing to hiring him, the money is attractive, and he finally agrees.
It takes some effort to track Seeghurs down out somewhere near the ocean on Coney Island. It’s not an easy thing finding him, the landlord hasn’t been paid and isn’t happy about it. But Reynolds persists and finds Seeghurs, all right. Dead.
He then begins a quest to find out what happened, which takes him to a memorial service for Max in Miscoulga. He hopes to track down some of the people Max mentioned in his scanty notes about the Santa Fe scandal. It’s in Miscoulga that Reynolds realises he’s being followed.
The shadowy people who are after him – or, really, Max’s drafts and all his notes about Sundial – aren’t averse to violence. Every encounter he has with them seems to leave him with less, fewer resources, and at the same time more, in the form of injuries and fear. He believes that calling his wife will put her and his children at risk. He knows too much to risk contacting the police. Where can he turn? The crumbling Hotel La Bahia is a sad place to make a last stand.
For someone who ends up so alone, you get the feeling it was not always that way. He and his wife have a good relationship in the beginning. You don’t see much of his teenagers, but there are several scenes with his parents, lively, though in rapidly deteriorating health. Some of their spirited conversations are among the funniest in the book. As I said in the opening, this is not the typical mile-a-minute thriller. For one thing, you’ll want to savour the prose, and you may find yourself pondering the possibilities, even after you turn the last page
Molotov Editions
Print/Kindle/iBook
£9.99
CFL Rating: 5 Stars
