Last year Dennis Tafoya made an audacious entry onto the crime fiction stage with Dope Thief about a pair of thieves who make their living posing as police and robbing drug dealers. The duo know that they’re living on borrowed time, and that the life is going to catch up to them sooner rather than later, but their commitment to it is as sad as it is believable. Yet for all its grim setting, it was a book of tremendous beauty and redemption. The last third of the novel in particular went to some truly unexpected places and the book’s resolution was satisfying on a level rarely achieved in crime fiction.
His brand new one, The Wolves of Fairmount Park, proves that Dope Thief was not a fluke and draws you even deeper into the world of drug addiction and petty crime. But this time the canvas is broader. It takes a multi-character point of view to layer the plot, about a junkie trying to solve a murder, with pathos and the rich details of the social and criminal strata.
When two upper middle class white kids are shot in front of a dope house in the inner city, Orlando Donovan, the junkie, half-uncle of one of them, who also lives in the neighborhood, becomes a person of interest to the cops, killers, and victim’s families. Suddenly, his unremarkable existence is placed under the microscope of everyone who never cared about it before—most surprisingly, his own.
He is driven to discover the truth about the shooting while he is simultaneously hunted by those who suspect him of responsibility or of knowing too much. What ensues is a great book.
I asked Dennis what the attraction of dope fiends were for him.
"I just think people who are obviously compromised are more interesting to write about and read about. I've always been much more fascinated by people who screw up than by people who succeed easily or who have a sort of bulletproof sense of right and wrong. Fiction is about conflict, and I think the ways we struggle with our own nature is probably the most interesting and realistic part of the story. Plus, if I have any talent, it's for empathy with the damaged. That, and for some reason I think I write really well about getting high."
I would add that he writes truly cinematic gun battles. Nobody writes guys going through doors with shotguns like Dennis Tafoya, though I doubt that endorsement will ever grace a book jacket. I heartily recommend Tafoya to fans of Richard Price, George Pelecanos, and Elmore Leonard too.
Anybody wanting a taste can check out his short stories in Crimefactory and Plots With Guns. You can read the rest of my interview with Dennis Tafoya at Hardboiled Wonderland. Or check out Keith Rawson's video interview.
Jedidiah Ayres writes fiction and keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland.
