Crashed by Timothy Hallinan

 

Self-published in 2010; published by Soho Crime on November 13, 2012

Some crime novels are just fun. Crashed is one of those. It's also smart, absorbing, and fast-moving. Timothy Hallinan does everything a writer should do whose goal is to keep a reader entertained from the first sentence to the last.

Crashed was originally self-published as an ebook, apparently because Hallinan's editors at HarperCollins can't recognize good writing when they see it and thus turned it down. Hallinan had the good sense to jump to Soho Crime, which has published Crashed and will soon publish the next two books in the series. The books deserve the wider audience that they'll now have.

Junior Bender is commissioned to steal a painting. The robbery goes spectacularly wrong, culminating in Bender's kidnapping at gunpoint and eventual delivery to Trey Annunziato, a young woman who is managing an enormously profitable criminal enterprise. Trey needs Bender to find out who is sabotaging the most successful porn flick that will ever be made, featuring a former child sitcom star named Thistle Downing. Trey both blackmails and threatens Bender to assure his cooperation.

Who is responsible for the sabotage? Who killed Bender's friend while the friend was watching Thistle's apartment? Why do two girls keep popping up and running away? The story works well as a mystery and it's sufficiently goofy to work as light comedy. One of the mysteries (the killer's identity) is resolved in a surprising way about three-fourths of the way into the novel, quickly followed by an explanation of the two girls. The solution to the mystery of the saboteur's identity isn't entirely unexpected, but the novel's resolution is immensely satisfying.

It's difficult to make a washed-up Hollywood junkie into a sympathetic character, but Hallinan does that with Thistle, in part by giving the reader a glimpse of Thistle's journal, a mad howl of anguish and despair coupled with a sincere desire for a better life, and in part by letting us see Thistle's downfall through the eyes of her sympathetic TV mom (her real mom, by contrast, is a barracuda). Bender, of course, is also a likable character, despite his criminal propensities. He is, in fact, a criminal with a heart, and helping Trey assure that Thistle makes a porn movie she detests causes Bender more than a few moral qualms. Despite the blackmail and threats, the reader knows that Bender will find a way to rescue Thistle.

Crashed is an unusual example of crime fiction in that the story is always believable. While other writers think shock and awe is the key to success, Hallinan knows that solid writing and appealing characters make a novel stand out. Hallinan's prose is lively and clever. This is light entertainment, the sort of novel that's often classed as a beach read, and it's an expertly crafted example of its type. Some of the scenes are played for laughs (Bender swinging from a chandelier, for instance) but Hallinan never goes so far over-the-top that the story loses credibility. Action scenes are underplayed, a refreshing departure from most crime fiction. Some scenes in Crashed are touching, many are amusing, one or two are surprisingly intense, and every bit of the tightly-plotted story is a joy to read.

RECOMMENDED

The Fear Artist by Timothy Hallinan

Published by Soho Crime on July 17, 2012

Philip “Poke” Rafferty is an American travel writer who now resides in Bangkok with his Thai wife and adopted Thai daughter.  Poke is leaving a paint store -- he plans to paint his home while his wife and daughter are out of town -- when he collides with a running man.  A couple of gunshots later, the running man is dead in Poke’s arms, a laundry ticket is in Poke’s pocket, and the Thai version of Homeland Security is interrogating Poke about the man’s last words.  It doesn’t take long for Poke’s status to change from witness to suspect.  As Poke tries to avoid arrest (or worse), he conducts his own investigation within Bangkok’s shadowy world of former spies and current criminals.

Apart from Poke’s half-sister Ming Li (who shows up in Bangkok to lend Poke an assist) and Vladimir, a morbidly philosophical Russian, the novel’s most significant player is an unhappy spook named Murphy, a former operative in the CIA’s Phoenix Program during the Vietnam War.  Murphy is training his creepy young daughter, Treasure, to be a spy -- or a psychopath.  While Treasure is an interesting character who makes a less than convincing contribution to the plot, Ming Li enlivens the story with an irreverent teenage perspective.  Vladimir provides the novel’s comic relief, as does (in a small role) the despondent boyfriend of Poke’s goth daughter.  Each character has a quirky, believable personality.

This is Timothy Hallinan's fifth Poke Rafferty thriller.  When Hallinan introduces a character from an earlier novel, he includes a quick summary of the character’s relationship to Poke.  For that reason, it isn’t necessary to read the earlier novels before reading this one, but the several backstories are a bit distracting and might even be annoying to fans of the series who are familiar with all the characters.

The tightly constructed plot -- part mystery, part spy story -- is suspenseful and (if you forgive the coincidence of the running man giving the laundry ticket to Poke in his dying moments) credible, a rare combination in thrillerworld.  Unfortunately, to the extent that the story turns into “Phoenix Program participant needs to cover up atrocities in Vietnam so they won’t ruin his current career,” it is far from original.  The Thai angle gives it a fresh twist and figuring out the multiple betrayals is a challenge.  Betrayal is a constant theme to which even Poke is not immune.  Circumstances require Poke to betray a friend’s trust, a guilt-inducing event that creates sympathy for his character.

Although Hallinan is a skillful writer, particularly adept at pulling a reader’s emotional strings, he tells the story in the present tense, a technique that is mildly annoying.  The text is infused with a political point of view that disapproves of the bullying American tendency to act as a global police force (at least when it serves American interests).  Readers who believe that the victims of collateral damage are people, not collateral, will likely appreciate Hallinan’s viewpoint, but more hawkish readers might be put off by the novel’s politics.  In any event, The Fear Artist is far from a political diatribe.  It is first and foremost an entertaining, fast-moving tale of crime and deception in an exotic locale.

RECOMMENDED