Reviews in the News: Noir et la Guerre

by Judi Baxter, PW Daily for Booksellers -- Publishers Weekly, 2/18/2005

"There is no guilty pleasure quite like noir fiction, " begins Robin Vidimos in the Denver Post. "In this seamy escape from political correctness, the women are broads--heavenly but hardly angelic. The tough-talking men lose, even when they seem to triumph. The stories' landscapes are dark places where dreams are fated to be dashed." Richard Rayner's new novel, The Devil's Wind (HarperCollins, $24.95), Vidimos continues, is "a worthy addition to this classic American genre."

Maurice Valentine is a rising architect, and Southern California's post-World War II building boom is his vehicle. By 1956, he is married to a wealthy senator's daughter. As he recalls, "I was a big-time architect, a man of the world, a cynic, adept at maneuver and compromise. Ideals and grand plans had no place in my life. I was scrambling always to get ahead, working always to make the process look smooth."

He has just finished designing and building the El Sheik Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, when Mallory Walker enters his life. She presents herself as a wealthy, enigmatic beauty, set on making her own mark in the world of architecture.

The two quickly become involved, and soon are together in Las Vegas. A group of high rollers, hustlers and Hollywood stars have gathered on the top floor of the casino to party, but also to watch the nighttime detonation of an A-bomb. Valentine glimpses Mallory strolling towards him; but when she pulls a nickel-plated pistol and fires a shot at him, his confusion grows as great as his fear.

"Crime, lust, betrayal and revenge are at the heart of crime noir, and Rayner has the conventions down cold," says Vidimos. "[It] was defined in the 1930s and '40s by the likes of Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain and Dashiell Hammett. James Ellroy and Elmore Leonard are probably the best-known practitioners in the current generation, but Rayner should be recognized as a comer. He clearly possesses the dark vision and stylistic hand needed to breathe life into a genre that may be old but needn't be dated."

A Long, Long Way (Viking, $24.95), the latest book from Irish novelist and playwright Sebastian Barry (The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty, Annie Dunne), is a powerful and haunting novel of World War I.

Quiet Willie Dunne, barely 18 and small in stature, leaves his home, family and girlfriend to join the Irish ranks fighting the Germans in Belgium. There, he experiences unimaginable violence and gore, but manages to hang on to his sanity and spirit, sustained by letters from home and the deep and abiding camaraderie with his fellow Irish soldiers.

At home on furlough, he witnesses Irishmen fighting the British authorities in the battle for home rule. His unit is forced to confront the insurgency, and this leads to a break with his father and harsh ridicule from other Irish soldiers. Gretta, the love of his life, marries another, leaving Willie devastated as he returns to the front lines.

"Barry could have turned mawkish at this point," Tom Walker writes in the Denver Post, "but, to his credit, he doesn't. Instead, he tells Willie's story, not without sentiment, but with a refreshing straightforwardness. . . . It is Barry's writing that grabs the reader and holds him in Willie Dunne's story."

Sometimes the writing is like poetry: "Suddenly the enemy guns opened their filthy cursing mouths and belched forth a ruinous misery of shells."

Sometimes Barry's prose is eloquently expressive: "But everything, no matter what, no matter how vexing, ruinous, or cheering, could be brought into battle, with the rest of a soldier's pack. It had to be; grief and horror could not be left behind. They folded to nothing and were carried like boulders."

Sometimes his words are haunting in their simplicity: "She shaved him so gently it was like being shaved by a human smile."

"A Long Long Way is one of those novels that, as you turn it over in your mind, may just stay with you a long, long time," Walker concludes.