'Welcome to Red Rock’ and ‘You are now leaving Red Rock’ are the book ends of John Dahl’s solid mid-nineties thriller Red Rock West, which features a hard pressed protagonist just trying to leave town. Every time he thinks he’s gotten away something brings him back and the signs on the highway taunt him silently each time he returns. It’s one of my favorite themes or devices - the protagonist who’s tied to a particular and preferably loathsome piece of geography wanting nothing more than be free of it. I loved the way John Ridley showed no mercy to his hapless and desperate character John Stewart, (not that one), in Stray Dogs. He had a Han Solo/Jabba the Hutt sort of debt relationship with a Las Vegas gangster that he was on his way to pay up when his car broke down just outside a desert town in Nevada. Everything conspired against Stewart to keep him stuck in the metaphorical-becoming-literal hell called Sierra. (Hopefully Ridley’s fantastic book will be back in print soon, but you can still check out Oliver Stone’s U-Turn, the film adaptation.) Or how about Charlie Arglist, the small-time crooked lawyer in Scott Phillips' The Ice Harvest, who has done the deed but now can’t escape Wichita, Kansas on Christmas Eve? In each scenario, regardless the circumstantial anchor, it’s the character’s own baggage, greed, lust and bad instincts that ultimately keep them kicking around their prison cell towns while fate bares down on them.
Another one of my favorite story devices is the character or couple who literally stumble onto a valuable find and instead of saving them, it becomes their undoing. Whether it’s Llewelyn and Carla Jean in No Country for Old Men, or Clarence and Alabama in True Romance, it’s that intersection of outrageous fortune and gambler’s instinct that, (almost), never ends well and I get to sit back comfortably and shake my head at the stupidity of those saps who take the money and run when they should just walk away from it first thing. What would I do in their shoes? Probably the same thing. Doesn’t matter how many times I watch it play out, I learn just as slowly and reluctantly as they do.
But y’know what I really love? I love it when my favorite types of fiction get the mash up and criss-cross treatment. Like, how about Scott Smith’s cold around the heart tale, Simple Plan, or John Rector’s The Cold Kiss? Both feature protagonists who happen upon piles of dirty money and are stuck in tight spots – a combination sure to provide some sweet scenes of stickiness that pack sour aftertastes. A new discovery for me and one that really works both of these angles is the just reprinted The Red Scarf by Gil Brewer.
Roy Nichols is up against the wall financially when the ride he's just flagged down goes off the road and wrecks. He and the driver's sexy girlfriend are the only survivors and she's got a suitcase full of money she's not eager to let anyone see. What to do, what to do? If you like giving verbal advice to characters in movies or books, ("Don't go into the attic!"), this is a good one for you.
As is the case with most of Brewer's work, (and Stray Dogs and The Ice Harvest), there’s some serious lustiness getting worked out on the page too. The sexual charge of the 1950s comes through in the language which is alternately frank and bizarrely modest. But I always love that about reading stuff from the American mid-century - kinda like watching a black and white movie, it puts me in a frame of mind that I enjoy. Speaking of the lusty American mid-century, the cover art for The Red Scarf reissue is by the always fantastic Richie Fahey who is able to evoke amazingly thick atmosphere from his images, (he’s also responsible for the covers of Megan Abbott’s first four books). Duane Swierczynski’s blurb says it nicely, “You’ll never look at a vixen with a suitcase full of mob money the same way again.”
Jedidiah Ayres writes fiction and keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland.
