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As with the author's second novel, DELICIOUS (reviewed on RTE October 2005), you've got to have a pretty wacky sense of humor to enjoy this one, Smith's first crime novel. It is a glorious send-up of Los Angeles noir: LA black humor in the spirit of playwright Joe Orton. It offers two chopped-off arms, three murders, two police shootings, and a drug overdose -- and rather than experiencing tension and chills, the reader is guffawing. If the novel, though similarly constructed, is not quite as ingenious a concoction as the second, it is nevertheless one hell of a good read. In it, eight major and nine minor characters play out their roles in quick little scenes. Their relationships are so tangled that any attempt to offer a coherent plot synopsis quickly flounders. But as a sign of the author's mastery of his craft, the reader never gets lost amongst the various high jinks and never has any problem recognizing instantly who this or that character is. What's more, in a particularly refreshing departure from most noir (most black humor in fact), some of the characters actually grow and develop as a result of the mayhem. None of it would have happened if Amado had not decided to make it look like the guy he'd just offed had committed suicide. In trying to string the body up to an automatic garage door, he caught his own arm in the mechanism, with the results that it was cut off. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, none of it would have happened if Amado had not then panicked and fled, leaving his tattooed arm behind to be taken to a pathology lab. There, as the novel begins, one of the employees, Bob, bored out of his mind, falls smitten with a spread-eagle, very naked, very busty dame depicted in one of the tattoos. Of course, nothing normally would have come of his infatuation. But two events intervene. First, Bob's girlfriend, Maura, has become so tired of her job as a trained masturbation coach that she blurts out she can't stand the sight of his penis anymore. Secondly, Esteban, the head of the LA Mexican Mafia of which Amado is a member, decides to hijack the arm as Bob is on his way to deliver it to the police station in order to prevent Amado's fingerprints from being identified. He thereby takes Bob prisoner. Depressed by Maura's declaration, fed-up with his general lot in life, Bob is vulnerable to Esteban's suggestion that he instead substitute another arm in order to totally confuse the police (a harebrained idea concocted, incidentally, by the drug-fueled mind of Esteban's gringo financial advisor). Bob, with only the slightest hesitation, agrees to become part of the scheme, even to the point of helping buy the chainsaw but not of actually using it, after Amado promises to introduce him to the girl of his dreams. (Remember that tattoo?) Matters might still not have gotten out of control if Esteban had not chosen one of Maura's clients, a pretentious cookbook writer, to provide the second arm. As a result, when Don, the detective who has become obsessed with bringing Esteban down, links victim and Maura, he becomes convinced that she and Bob must be into something really weird. His suspicions don't stop him, however, from becoming smitten with her and taking her to bed. As for Maura, she -- as a result of her encounters with the detective -- discovers handling loaded firearms excites her more than any penis can, providing her the speediest orgasms she has ever experienced. When Don is called to a Palm Springs hospital where one of the Mafia members has landed, she insists on accompanying him. By that point events are beyond the control of any of the 16 individuals (two of whom are already dead, anyway), though perhaps matters still would not have wound up the way they did had the Rodriguez brothers not been so bent on exacting revenge. Tragedy often comes to those who cannot learn and change; comedy holds out the possibility for growth and transformation. Here, we are firmly in the world of comedy, of romance. Yes, one character winds up totally frustrated. Six finish as corpses. But by the novel's end there have also evolved a happy retiree enjoying the benefits of his illegally earned money, a new head of the Mafia, a rookie police trainee, a newly hired scriptwriter of telenovelas (Spanish soap operas) making more money than he ever dreamed he could while a gang member, two marriages, a new romance, and a baby on its way. And Bob? Well, he is now to be referred to as Roberto.
Reviewed by Drewey Wayne Gunn, December 2005
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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