The Neon City (In The Gutter Looking At The Stars Book 1) by Sean O'Leary; Female Led Hard Boiled Neo Noir is Among O’Leary’s Best

 

The Neon City (In The Gutter Looking At The Stars Book 1) by Sean O'Leary; Female Led Hard Boiled Neo Noir is Among O’Leary’s Best

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Last year, I became acquainted with the Mystery novels of Sean O’Leary through the novel, The Bangkok Girl. It was a modern hard-boiled noir novel with all of the usual trappings of the subgenre: a dark sinister urban setting, cynical detective, innocent victims, organized crime, inept or corrupt officials, and just a genuinely pessimistic feeling overall. It was a throwback to an old genre but it also had the psychological depth of current postmodern literature. 

Now, O’Leary is at it again with his latest series, In The Gutter Looking At the Stars (such a poetic name) and its first volume, The Neon City. Similar to its predecessor, it takes a postmodern attempt at a familiar and deeply respected subgenre. 

O’Leary excels at that. In The Bangkok Girl, his lead detective, Lee Jensen had all of the usual traits associated with such a protagonist: hardened outlook, teeth-grinding mist trust and grudging respect with local law enforcement, empathy for the victims, and hatred for the people who get rich and profit out of others’ misery and a system that allows this exploitation of misery to continue. However what set Lee apart from his literary ancestors was his health. Lee had Schizophrenia and required medication. The book reveals this dark cynical urban world seen through the perspective of a disabled character and how his condition limits and aids him in his investigations.

The Neon City also gives a fresh perspective but not on ability. The perspective is one of gender and sexual orientation. This book features two memorable female lead characters: a sharp cynical PI and a damaged trafficked young woman forced into sex work.

Candy Wong is a Hong Kong based PI who is hired to look for Maye, a girl who disappeared after accepting a suspicious housekeeping position. We get the story from both Candy's and Maye’s points of view, from the detective and the victim.

The dual narration is the strongest highlight of this book. O’Leary captures the deuteragonists’ individual voices, experiences, attitudes, personalities, and behaviors. They have very few moments together, so their individual stories are separated by proximity but are equal in impact and storytelling. 

Candy is both a tough talker and nervous newcomer. She isn't above mouthing off to supervisors, clients, or colleagues. (When she is first introduced to the case by her boss and mentor, her first questions are “Who's paying me and how much?”). Her insatiable curiosity, rapid fire sharp tongue, and athletic energy give her the mental and physical advantage to excel at her job.

 She is similar to the wisecracking heroines from Old Hollywood films usually played by the likes of Barbara Stanwyck, Eve Arden, Rosalind Russell, or Katharine Hepburn. She is the tough talking gal who can outsmart those around her and still display some vulnerability.

Candy’s vulnerability manifests itself into her romantic life and uncertainty about her profession. Candy is a lesbian and has an on-off relationship with her girlfriend, Odesa. During the case, the two have a passionate mostly sexual relationship which they contemplate taking further.

It's interesting to feature a queer character whose sexuality is not the main focus of the book. It is a subplot like other Mystery novels where the detective has to juggle professional and personal conflicts. Candy and Odesa’s relationship could move forward but it could also end rather abruptly. The subplot doesn't overpower the book, but allows Candy the freedom and breathing space to reveal her more emotional moments.

 Another moment that reveals Candy's vulnerability is when she admits her own deficiencies in investigation. When she hits a stumbling block, she hits social media and chats with the experts: her fellow private investigators. 

One of them is our old friend Lee Jensen. The siblings from another father/author compare notes about recent investigations and provide advice about present cases. 

Even though I only read The Bangkok Girl previously, I do know that this is O’Leary’s 14th book. So I wonder if the other characters are also protagonists in O’Leary's books. If so, that's a humorous prospect imagining all of the main characters gathering together to mention their confusion about the plot holes or narrative blocks that take the form of investigation conflicts. It would be hilarious to also picture them talking smack about that weird guy that keeps writing about everything that they do and say. 

The other point of view character in the book is Maye. Her trajectory is by far the most emotional and intense in the book. She begins as a terrified and frightened girl then transforms into a traumatized hardened woman.

When we are first introduced to Maye, she is running from the housekeeping position when she realizes that it is a front for a human trafficking ring. Her tension is palpable as she tries to enter a safe space only to encounter rejection and betrayal that returns her to where she started.

This lesson reveals a hard bitter truth that the world can be cruel and doesn't care about what happens to her. Now in captivity and forced into sex work, Maye is left with nothing. She moves and works physically alive but figuratively dead, playing the part of a beautiful object of desire while her independence, self-reliance, and emotional strength are crushed from within.

The traffickers use various means to control. They drug Maye to lower her inhibitions and change her name and appearance. This is a tactic that is often used on trafficking victims. It is their captors’ way of saying, “We own you. You are whoever we say you are. Your old self is dead now.” It has a psychological effect on Maye as she falls into and wearily accepts the identity that they give her. 

However, Maye is not completely helpless. She tries to survive and even thrive in her new surroundings. She cultivates alliances with some of her captors and her clients. It is a survival instinct but it also creates conflict among her assailants so their ties are weakened. 

If they want her to be the helpless victim, she will be the helpless victim. If they want her to be the seductive siren, well place her in water and point her to the sailor's direction. Because she is ready to pleasure, ready to seduce, and ready to fight by submission.

Maye does what her captors want and plays on their expectations. She can use their weaknesses against them so she can either escape or failing that ascend within the organization to a position where she is no longer the injured victim.

With Candy and Maye, this is a strong female led mystery novel. It tells an engaging case from the victim and their potential rescuer and makes them both fascinating characters surviving in the intense hardened cynical dark urban nourish world.

New Book Alert: Gumshoe Blues (The Peter Ord Yarns) by Paul D. Brazill; Hard-boiled Detective Genre Gets Millennial Face Lift

New Book Alert: Gumshoe Blues (The Peter Ord Yarns) by Paul D. Brazill; The Hard Boiled Detective Genre Gets a Millennial Facelift

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




Spoilers: If you are a fan of mysteries, chances are you have come across the hard-boiled detective subgenre. Started in the 1920’s, these stories were popularized by such periodicals like The Black Mask and the Policeman's Gazette and were written by the likes of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James M. Cain. The stories usually involved a cynical tough-talking private detective solving a murder or missing persons case surrounded by the dark milieu of dangerous mobsters, corrupt politicians, sinister sociopaths, police forces who are useless or on the take, seductive sirens, and supposed pillars of society with particularly dark secrets. It's a dark world that the detective finds himself in and by the end of the investigation, his cynicism is clearly justified.



Since those days, many authors switched around, parodied, paid tribute to, and updated the genre with different levels of success. A recent variation of the genre is the Peter Order Yarns by Paul D. Brazill. Brazill transports the genre to England where he not only pays tribute to the hard boiled detectives but updates the genre to give it a postmodern Millennial sensibility making the hard edges even harder, the cynical detective even more self-aware, and filling it with pop culture references and technology to amuse modern Readers.


In his anthology, Gumshoe Blues, Brazill writes four stories that pits Ord, a former teacher turned private investigator, against Seatown, England's not-so-finest citizens as he tries to find some semblance of justice in his part of the world.


What makes this book is Ord himself. He has a sarcastic wit that will make the Reader smirk if not chuckle. In his first person point of view, Ord makes comments like “Some twat, somewhere, was playing a U2 song, over and over again, and all was far from quiet on friggin’ New Years Day.” Later he derisively refers to the members of U2 as “Bonzo, The Ledge, and their musically illiterate pals.”

He derides everyone and everything around him with the same detached cynicism mocking Seatown (“a fading one-whore town”),
his clients (Jack Martin a nightclub owner is described as “Despite his Newcastle accent, his nicotine-stained and brandy-brimmed voice still sounded more than a little like the tiger from Disney's The Jungle Book cartoon”) ,
the local characters (one man, Tuc, was so dumb that he received his nickname because “he tattooed a dotted line and the word 'Cut’ on his neck while looking in the mirror.”),
his ex-wife (Ord says he was married for fourteen years but he “don't (sic) remember breaking two friggin’ mirrors.”),
himself (“Jack Martin was hiring me because I was a sex-starved loser. The sort of bloke, in fact, that any resourceful, gold-digging stripper that recognized that I was ripe for the fleecing. Flattery will get you everywhere.”)
and everyone else he encounters. (While at a club promoting Super ‘70s night, Ord observes: “most of the clientele were knocking on seventy, too, which is why it earned its reputation as grab-a-granny night.”)

There is a hard edge to Ord's humor and the more the stories continue, his sarcasm seems more desperate. He is surrounded by a vengeful ex-wife and childhood friends who are unemployed and have no choice but to take on lives of crime.

This is a world where crime families such as the nefarious Ferry Family and Ronnie and Roger Kruger, the latter duo are obvious parodies of the real-life Kray Twins, rule the area.

In Seatown, alcoholism and drug addiction run rampant and married couples beat each other more than bed each other.

In a town that appears to be claustrophobically cut off from the rest of the world and the residents are often left to their own violent, hopeless, lawless devices, Ord's sarcasm becomes a defense mechanism. It's his means of retaining some sense and detachment from the hard edged world around him.

A striking detail about these stories is the realism behind the life of a private detective. In most fictional accounts, the detective may start with a theft or a missing person’s case but they always develop into a murder that puts the detective on the run from mobsters, career criminals, stalkers and what have you. Expect beautiful women (or handsome men depending on the detective's gender and sexuality), threats, breaking and entering, and car chases a-plenty. The detective almost always figures out whodunnit usually during a tense and potentially violent confrontation with the murderer in question.

The short stories in this collection show what life is really like for a private detective, i.e. that murder is rarely the case.

In the title story, the longest story in the set, “Gumshoe Blues”, Ord is hired to infiltrate nightclubs to learn which of the exotic dancers is having an affair with her clients. This assignment ends prematurely when he himself sleeps with one of the dancers. Ord is then hired to look for his ex wife's fiancée's father as well as to tutor and spy on the daughter of Jack Martin, a very wealthy and dangerously tempered client. He is also solicited to find a cheating spouse, a witness to a public indecency charge, and to ghostwrite Martin's memoirs.

The story, “Mr. Kiss and Tell” Ord moonlights as a store detective/shopping center Santa while he is hired to find a missing wife who disappeared after a domestic disturbance encounter.

In “Who Killed Skippy?” Ord is hired to mind the black (or is that white?) sheep of the criminal Ferry Family, Craig, an autodidact, who has a penchant for booze and senior citizen women. Craig then hires him to bury a kangaroo, one of several exotic animals that Craig was supposed to transport to a rich eccentric. However, the kangaroo was shot by a mysterious biker.

“The Lady and The Gimp” the final story features Ord hired to find his client's mother to resolve an inheritance dispute.

Most of the stories involve missing persons or catching or spying on wayward spouses or family members. Even when the case veers towards murder like the last two stories, there is a lack of suspense as the killers are easy to figure out by Ord and the Reader.

There are no exciting passages of car chases or thrilling escape attempts from the villain's lair. In fact, most of Ord's detective work involves interviewing locals and mere observation.

There are very few dramatic confrontations with the suspects and most of Ord's discoveries can be attributed to knocking on the right door or sheer dumb luck. Instead of his forebears who get beaten up and live to fight another day, when Ord gets hit usually because of his own foolishness or big mouth, it really hurts and he's out for the count for days.

While this may make this anthology sound boring, the truth is, it's rather refreshing to read. So many accounts glamorize the world of the private detective and make it appear to be more dangerous and sexier than it really is. What most books, movies, and shows don't reveal are the dull days that involve paperwork, cases that require minimal suspense, and trailing leads that don't go anywhere. There isn't a murderer behind every door and sometimes the solutions are either very easy to discover or are never resolved.

The Peter Ord Yarns give a realism to the life of a private detective that counters the glamor seen in other sources. In fact, Knighton’s book is so self-aware of that image that Ord mocks it. When Ord reveals that he began his career as a private investigator he “didn't harbor any romantic illusions that the profession would bear much of a resemblance to the lives of Marlowe and Spade, (he) had at least a smattering of hope that there might be a little silver screen glamor to the job. Over the years, the hope and (he) have barely been on nodding terms.”

Gumshoe Blues is a clever addition to the hard boiled detective genre by commenting and mocking it. It is also a tribute and a hard, cynical, sarcastic, sometimes love letter to the genre.