John Darrin: September 2010 Archives

In the 80's and 90's, Gary Alexander wrote a bunch (eight, to be exact) of successful and well-received detective novels published by top name houses like St. Martin's and Doubleday. Things change, and his protagonists Bamsan Kiet, a police chief in the fictional Southeast Asian country of Luong, and Luis Balam, a shop keeper cum tourist guide cum private investigator in Cancun, gave way to such a whole new genre, hard-boiled female PI's such as Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone and Sara Peretsky's V.I. Warshawsky. Short of a sex-change operation, Bamsan and Luis were out of luck.

Now Gary's back, with as improbable a protagonist as I can remember - a stand-up comedian who gets himself entangled in the just-as-improbable career of his neighbor - virtual mob hits. Now picture this, you're a mob hit man, a profession more precarious than an epileptic tight-rope walker. Pays well, but I'm guessing the health care benefits are expensive. So maybe it needs to pay better. And then there is the messy factor. Dead bodies, midnight runs to the incinerator, blood back splatter if you're standing too close. The dry-cleaning bill alone must be outrageous.

So, what does he do? He doesn't actually kill them, just offers them the chance to disappear into a new life. For a fee, of course. Sort of a witless protection program. But it works for a while, but then the dead start to rise and Ted Snowe, the non-hit man, has, in the immortal words of Desi Arnaz, some 'splainin' to do.