222 pages, TLC Media
Review by Bill Kirton
No writer would want to be compared with
the late and very much lamented Elmore Leonard; it would be the kiss of death
because he’s incomparable. Having said that, there are many aspects of The Car Bomb which recall the great
man’s style and preoccupations.
First of all, it’s set in Detroit
– a Detroit
Next, the citizens he shows us have the
same confusing moral compass that sets good guys and bad guys on the same
level, each with characteristics which belong to the other end of the spectrum
to that which they seem to occupy.
The central character, local TV anchor
Frank DeFauw, a handsome, charismatic, family man with a regular mistress and a
taste for other casual, extra-marital encounters, is said by his son Bobby,
many of his friends and colleagues (and by Frank himself), to be ‘full of
bullshit’. At one point, even as he’s thinking about his other son, Tommy, who
was killed in a boating accident, he ‘glimpsed an attractive redhead pulling a
ballpoint pen and a pad of yellow sticky notes from her purse’. And this is one
of the (very few) ‘good’ guys. Another character’s opinion of him was that ‘he
was not just smart, but clever and intuitive about people, dedicated, caring
and, probably more than any white guy she had ever known, color blind’.
Opposite him, his school friend, Judge
William O’Bryan, whose job it is to uphold the sanctity of the law and hand out
judgements in court, is as corrupt as they come and totally lacking in
compassion. When Frank asks him why a person he (Frank) thinks is innocent would
kill his wife and kids, the reply is chilling. ‘Why
do evil or f*cked up people do any of the things they do? Because they’re evil
or f*cked up.’
Frank’s real enemy is another journalist,
Wil Barnes, whose columns are almost invariably about Frank’s peccadilloes. And
yet this ‘little prick’, which is how Frank usually refers to him, uses
operational methods and techniques which mirror those of Frank. With these
figures at the centre of the narrative, along with many others demonstrating
equally ambivalent moral stances, notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ seem irrelevant. The
use of children here and there in the narrative suggests that there is
nonetheless a notion of innocence, but it’s an innocence that gets compromised
(at best) by events.
There are other narrative and stylistic
factors which put this story firmly in the ‘Leonard school’. From the shocking
hook of its opening chapter, the pace is unrelenting. It’s movie-ready, cutting
fast from instant to instant, keeping everything in the ‘now’, never dwelling
too long on any episode. The narrative takes us right into the middle of a
pre-existing set of people and circumstances, all alive, vibrant, busy. We jump
from setting to setting, seeing things which are happening simultaneously in
different places to different people. It’s making use of the confused,
fractured nature and texture of reality.
And then there’s the dialogue – sharp,
witty, natural – all of it in the moment. Frequently, the end of a chapter is
marked by a sharp one-liner. On one occasion, for example, Frank’s wife Marci says
something nasty about Judge O’Bryan. Frank says ‘Jesus, I always thought you
liked him’. She replies ‘I do. But none of us is perfect. You should hear what
I really think of you’.
Cliff-hangers abound and they’re varied. As
well as those involving specific threats or actions, there are the more subtle
ones, as when Marci tells Frank that she intends to file for divorce. Frank walks
out onto the deck and sees a seagull on the bow of the boat moored at their
dock. He decided that ‘if the gull stayed in place for at least the next five
seconds, everything would be okay. Starting his slow, even count, he got as far
as three’.
This book satisfies the criteria for both
crime (UK ) and mystery (USA
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