Richard Stern is also the author of the novels Natural Shocks (2004), Other Men's Daughters (2004), and Stitch (2004) as well as a complete collection of his short fiction Almonds to Zhoof (2005), all published by Northwestern University Press. Stern is the Helen Regenstein Professor of English emeritus at the University of Chicago.
While this debut novel, winner of the First Coast Writers Festival's Josiah W. Bancroft Jr. Award, has its faults, it deserves praise for sheer action and suspense. PI Hardin, a retired counter intelligence officer, is asked by a prominent Grand Rapids, Mich., lawyer to protect his niece from her estranged police officer husband, who is likely to beat her up on sight. The husband turns out to be the least of Hardin's worries, as the plot immediately becomes increasingly violent and complex, requiring one to pay close attention to who did what to whom and why or be lost forever. Bailey has a good sassy sense of humor. He also has a peculiar vernacular of his own. For instance, in a scene in which two characters smoke, the author writes, "He started plumbing his costume for a cigarette." Plumbing? His "costume" is a pair of overalls. A few lines later: "I took a long pull on my smoke, extracted it from my face, and looked out over the river." Now, for a bit of local color: "Popsicle sticks weathered to gray and the silver pull tabs from beverage cans littered the ground." Pull tabs on the ground? This detail would seem to set the action a generation or so ago, but in fact period and, for that matter, place are irrelevant in this hard-boiled homage, in which the villains get stacked up like cordwood. Bailey's prose can be eccentric, but there's no denying his narrative drive, which keeps the reader moving right along until the last page. Agent, Andrew Zack. (Feb. 13) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Though focused on Southern California and the film industry, this novel covers a lot of geographic and emotional ground. Renowned director Ezra Keneret and his longtime friend, film historian Wendell Spear, both realize that their creative and productive days are nearly over. The specters of physical disability and loss of vocation provide tension of one sort, while flashbacks and flash-forwards reveal familial problems. The interlacing viewpoints of the many secondary characters serve to underscore the power as well as the fragility of relationships. Mirroring the unsteady emotional condition of those living on the Pacific Rim, the title is fitting. Both Keneret and Spear are bright, sophisticated, dedicated men, even honorable for the most part. Their domestic and professional histories, as well as the inside look into movie-making, are skillfully revealed in this well-written and finely imagined novel. Stern is the Helen Regenstein Professor of English at the University of Chicago and has been publishing fiction, poems, essays, and drama since 1960. Recommended for all libraries. Jack Hafer, Chesterfield Cty. Lib. Syst., VA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
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