Monday, March 02, 2020

Like Your Noir Crime Fiction Very Dark? Pick Scott Phillips, THAT LEFT TURN AT ALBUQUERQUE

When the first hardboiled crime novel from Scott Phillips, Ice Harvest, came out in 2000, nominations and awards quickly swarmed to the clever and sardonic book. (Dave and I picked up multiple copies and were thrilled to get them signed.)

In a great twist of plot, Phillips has brought his latest, THAT LEFT TURN AT ALBUQUERQUE, over to Soho Crime (Soho Press's imprint) and grabbed a dynamic platform for his wicked work. Taking the classic slip-into-crime approach that Donald Westlake so excelled at, Phillips provides the slimy and increasingly unlikeable Douglas Rigby, a California attorney who should know better. But then of course, making dumb and immoral decisions just "happens" to Rigby. None of it is his fault ... right?

Home for a quick lunch with his real-estate agent wife, Rigby's no longer as jittery about his upcoming financial disaster as he had been the night before, and assures his spouse:
"Don't worry about it, baby. It's under control."

"We could lose the  house, Rigby. That's a disaster for anybody, but for a real estate agent ... Jesus, I don't even want to think about it."

"Baby, did I just say I've got it under control or didn't I?" He was squirting Sriracha sauce onto a plate of cottage cheese.

"You did, and as usual you left out the important details. All the details, in fact. And also the broad strokes. ... Don't blow smoke up my a**, how much trouble are we really in?'

He shrugged and made a face, eating fast and talking with his mouth full of pinkish, mushy curds. "Look, we're not out of it yet, but I've got a plan. We're going to be fine. Now, all I need is for you to stop worrying."
And that's classic Phillips -- if Rigby's casual amorality isn't obvious in his clichés of "I've got it and it's not my fault anyway," his disgusting habits round out the character description, don't they?

If you're already a Phillips fan, you're bouncing in your seat by now, wondering how much worse things will get and how many stupid solutions Rigby will come up with, before getting caught in his own leg-hold trap. And if this author is new to you, imagine Westlake's most disastrous crime capers, shoved into darker and more dire straits ... or Dave Zeltserman's morally ambiguous criminals on the loose, shackled only by having a home life they mistakenly think they might be owed.

It's good to see the twisted noir end of the Soho shelves filling up with deftly narrated, irresistibly twisted material like this! But of course, it won't fit every taste. So, reader, consider yourself warned -- and invited. How bad can Rigby's decisions get? Once you're halfway in, you won't be able to resist finding out.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

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