Killshot

Killshot

By Elmore Leonard

Welcome!

I am in the middle of my own personal reading challenge. I didn't mention this in the previous blogpost because I was too busy getting pseudo-academic on the subject of Ernest Hemingway (I insist on using the "pseudo" prefix because A) I drink rather heavily while writing and B) even if I weren't, I rarely know what I'm talking about). It wasn't planned. It's not particularly organized and I didn't invite other bloggers to participate, though you are more than welcome to hop aboard if you wish.

From now until Christmas I plan on reading as many novels by notable authors that I have previously never read. The first in this challenge was Ernest Hemingway, an author I have somehow managed to avoid for 38 years prior to last week. Other authors officially queued up for a peek this season are Iris Murdoch, Truman Capote and Raymond Chandler. But this week I finally tackled an author I've been dying to read for a few decades: Elmore Leonard.

As I am sure I have mentioned on more than one occasion on this blog, one of my favorite sites on the web is The Onion's AV Club. For anyone who takes popular culture seriously, it is an invaluable resource for books, film, music and games, both old and new. One of my favorite columns on the AV Club is something called Gateway to Geekery, which provides step-by-step tutorials for Johnny-Come-Latelys who would like to get into the work of prolific artists. For example, perhaps you are interested in exploring Lou Reed's discography but you feel hopelessly intimidated by the sheer volume of material. Where do you start? Gateway to Geekery is there to help lest you make the mistake of picking up a copy of Metal Machine Music.

Anyway, I wish there was a Gateway to Geekery article available to anyone late to the Elmore Leonard Party because I'm pretty sure they would have advised me against reading Killshot.

Killshot is mid-career novel by Elmore Leonard. Written in 1989, it is the story of Wayne Colson and his wife, Carmen who inadvertently get caught in the middle of the shakedown of Carmen's boss. After a brief physical altercation, Wayne sends Armand Degas, an Ojibway hit man, and Richie Nix, a dim-witted loose cannon away, with their tails between their legs. Degas is a professional and knows that both Wayne and Carmen have seen their faces and could positively identify them in a police line-up. He is determined to do away with Wayne and Carmen as a measure of job security and maintained anonymity. As with any novel of this sort, the police are ineffectual. Wayne and Carmen are natually forced to take matters into their own hands.

I was expecting a fast-paced novel with lots of slick-talking characters and what I got was a slow plot that seemed unsure of where to go next. It felt as if Leonard was throwing in all sorts of half-concocted ideas and ill-formed plot lines only to abandon them before they fully materialized. While the characters are indeed strong, I found it impossible to believe that a professional such as Armand Degas would have partnered up with someone as dull-witted as Richie Nix. Degas must have known upon meeting this half-wit that doing any sort of business with him was going to end in disaster and it's not like they were forced to work together. Furthermore, Degas could have dissolved their partnership at any time. So why does he let such an unstable partner continue to live despite his erratic behavior? Degas's motivations remained concealed throughout and that weakened the novel considerably.

Furthermore, the legendary dialog that I expected from Leonard never really materialized. The dialog was by no means awful, but given what I had heard about his ability to write a conversation, I was decidedly underwhelmed. It is possible that it was built up too much prior to reading, but I found that the dialog in Killshot is a far cry from the brilliant work of Richard Price. Perhaps I picked the wrong book.

One area in which this book excels is Leonard's exploration of the theme of security. Leonard takes aim at the myth that we can insulate ourselves from crime and violence via various methods of self defense (in this case firearms and police protection but it could extend to more contemporary methods such as video surveillance, home security firms etc...). The fact of the matter is that security is a complete myth. The amount of time, money and effort we put into security does not directly translate into a more secured existence. In fact, it is impossible to protect ourselves from anything or anyone if that thing or person is determined to get you. Leonard did a fine job of expressing this from both the perspective of the terrorized Colson couple trying to protect themselves from would-be killers and Armand Degas, a professional killer trying to protect his anonymity.

Unfortunately the themes of the novel are not enough to carry the slow, meandering plot. Killshot had the makings of a decent novel but too many weird directions and loose ends makes it feel like an unfinished idea rather than a fully actualized novel. Given Elmore Leonard's reputation and his sheer volume of work, I will definitely give him another chance (though I am going to solicit recommendations before I jump into another title).

The Butcher's Boy

The Butcher's Boy

By Thomas Perry

Warning: Pretension and snobbery ahead. Proceed with caution.

The Onion's A.V. Club has a great column called The Box of Paperback Book Club where writer Keith Phipps reviews the 75 paperbacks he acquired via a cardboard box he found at a local thrift store. Most of the books are old trade paperbacks in the genre of science fiction, crime and adventure (some of which is X-rated). I thought the idea was ingenious. Reading and reviewing a box of random castoffs from a suburban household. From Heinlein to obscure curiosities of the era. All the books were published between 1960 and 1980 and I would imagine a great deal of it has gone out of print.

It was in the spirit of The Box of Paperbacks Book Club that I picked up The Butcher's Boy by Thomas Perry. An only slightly better than average crime novel about a nameless hit man evading both the mafia that wants him dead and the federal agents who have picked up his scent. The book was published in 1982 and obviously predates personal computers. It is strange to read a crime novel where characters cannot simply do their research online and have to leave contact numbers with people so that they can call each other later to compare information. No wonder the hit man has no trouble evading everyone. Aside from the dated references, it was about 15 pages into this book when I realized that Keith Phipps has his work cut out for him.

As Thomas Perry established his predictable characters, my mind began to wander from the story toward Phipps, bad fiction and the sordid world of mass-market paperbacks. What got me thinking was this: How many books like this exist? I'm talking supermarket check-out fiction. Slapdash stories that read like bad movies with worse actors. Predictable novels where the reader has things figured out a couple of hundred pages before the end of the book. Mass market paperbacks for housewives and commuters. Words for a TV generation. More bluntly: crap.

How much crap is published and where does it all go?

If there are 1000 publishing houses in America and Canada (An absurdly safe guess) each publishing an average of 1o mass-market, point-of-purchase novels per year (again, an absurdly low number), that equals 10,000 of these sorts of books hitting the (super)market each year! And I'm low-balling these numbers! I know these numbers are far larger than simple 10,000. Assume that these books have been published since the days of dime-store novels and we are talking of a staggering number of awful books.

Who buys this stuff? As the Perry's story introduced characters and sub-plots only to kill them off willy-nilly, I thought about the publishing industry a little more. Consider that when I worked in publishing (in the 1990s) the common statistic bandied about that was that 90% of all books were bought by 25% of the total population. Let's assume this is accurate, or at least close to accurate. That means 75% of all people (in North America of course) don't buy books, which presumably means they don't read many books either. Fine. That means that 25% are responsible for the purchase off ALL books from Charles Dickens, J.D. Salinger and Joseph Conrad to Dan Brown, Mitch Albom and Sophie Kinsella.

Frightening.

Given that a disproportionate amount of the publishing market is inundated with trade paperbacks a la The Butcher's Boy, we can assume that a large portion of that 25% are buying on the lower end of the quality scale. Which means that a great number of book buyers are buying their reading material from supermarkets, drugstores and gift shops.

This is highly depressing. As I continued to read about the exploits of Elizabeth Waring and her struggle to be respected in the man's world of the Justice Department, my mind descended even lower through the depths of the publishing industry.

Where does all this garbage go? As the nameless assassin wreaked havoc throughout Las Vegas and Cleveland and all points in between as if Perry was making the story up as he typed, I thought long and hard about where this stuff goes. Well, I can account for one copy of Thomas Perry's The Butcher's Boy (and I didn't pay for it, I assure you) but what about the rest? The rec rooms, garages and attics of this planet must be teeming with bad fiction, right? Well, there is probably a lot of these books around, substituting for missing coffee table legs, holding down important bills or killing innocent insects as they cross your kitchen counter. But not as many as you might think...

If a bookstore does not sell a book over the course of a year they can sell it back to the publishing house at list price. Many literary failures end their writing careers with their novels collecting dust in a publisher's warehouse, never even getting a sniff at a second printing. This is the fate of the vast majority of everything published. In the case of mass market paperbacks, which constitute the largest branch of non-educational publishing, the stores don't even have to return the book. They simply tear off the covers of the books and return those for the full cost of the book.

That's right. Mass-market paperbacks aren't even worth the paper they are printed on. That must be a humbling thought for authors who specialize in the genre. I wonder if anyone has ever bothered to ask Maeve Binchy her thoughts on that matter? Or Keith Phipps, for that matter. The majority of books are nothing more than a mediocre doorjamb or paperweight. You can learn everything you need to know about the book from its cover, which is, ironically, the most valuable part of the entire novel.

Which gets me back to The Butcher's Boy. Perry finished the novel with enough loose-ends and questions to fill a sequel (that was never written) and leaves the reader entirely unsatisfied. with the resolutions. But what more was I to expect from a novel like this? While this particular, full-intact copy of Thomas Perry's novel has somehow traveled to the farthest reaches of the planet where English novels can be found, it is still not worth the paper it is printed on. It's a good thing I have a coffee table in need of leveling. Methinks this book is going to find a second life after all.

As for me, I have reached my yearly quota of mass-market paperbacks. I cannot fathom the idea of making my way through 75 Thomas Perry novels in a row. It seems like an exercise in self-hate.

Good luck to you, Mr. Phipps. You have earned my respect and sympathy.