Powerful New Crime Novel from David Guterson, THE FINAL CASE

 

[Originally published in New York Journal of Books]

“In The Final Case Guterson clearly denounces the forces of destruction in people who choose a dark and abusive anger over respect. It’s beautiful, profound, and an insistent page-turner.”

When the author of Snow Falling on Cedars steps into crime fiction, there’s every reason to expect an emotionally intense book with powerful and unforgettable imagery. And for The Final Case, those descriptors are exactly on target.

At the same time, the book’s page-turning progress of revelation and answers is less about the results of the upcoming trial—as the nameless narrator accompanies his father Royal through the frail and aging attorney’s defense of a horrible Seattle woman, his father admits that the woman and her husband “abused a girl they adopted from Ethiopia until she died of it.” With a fine understanding that he accepts this case to provide a defense for the indefensible, he outlines the possible reasons to stay out of it: “I guess I could tell myself that what she did just fills me with so much abhorrence that I can’t represent her.”

But Royal’s sense of how a trial should work, of the primacy of law, commits him to the effort: “If you convict someone because they’re abhorrent, and not because they broke the law, you might as well live in a dictatorship. And who wants that? I don’t. And another thing. I play my role according to my lights and I’m at peace with myself.”

In a sense, this moves the novel out of the traditions of crime fiction: Though the details of the case are excruciatingly stacked up, there is no suspense-riddled investigation to retrieve them—they are already available. And the punch to the gut is less in the horrific details of abuse than in the accretion of the beauty, courage, and honor of the short life of Abeba Temesgen, later Abigail Harvey. When her adoptive American parents destroy her, they crush something and someone that should have been a cherished treasure.

Guterson positions the book to take on more than this murder case, through his compact language that never relents in piling up truth. There are long sentences that feel like Proust, summoning all the details of a moment, an environment, an attachment. Unforgettable and most intense is a diatribe from the mother of Royal’s murderous client. For almost five pages, this Mrs. Huber justifies the evil her daughter lives by, beginning with, “You know what? You’re from Seattle. In Seattle, they elect communists to sit on their city council.” Through racism, accusations of brainwashing, predictions of an apocalyptic “next war,” and exalting of righteous and vicious Christians in a battle against “disrespect,” she vomits a diatribe that is frighteningly familiar.

Royal’s discouraged father admits in the car afterward, “I can’t put Betsy’s mother on the stand.” He explains: “She could have told the jurors a lot about Betsy, so they could come to understand her better. But no. She’s full of anger instead. The world’s a terrible place in her head, filled with terrible, horrible people who are one hundred percent wrong about everything.”

Royal’s son knows his father’s time is limited, that life is short now for the elderly man. He receives a blessing into this final case, this commuting and presence with his dad, and even going undercover to learn more about Betsy’s husband, by his wife Allison, a partner in this long-term affectionate and respectful marriage that mirrors the one his father lives in. The plain and sometimes exhausting labors that go into making family worthwhile are part of his chosen life, as they have been for his dad.

So the suspense of the novel becomes a question of how Royal and his family will sustain the enormous pressure of this trial, and its painful and indisputable revelations. In The Final Case Guterson clearly denounces the forces of destruction in people who choose a dark and abusive anger over respect. It’s beautiful, profound, and an insistent page-turner. Which, alas, will not be read by “the dark side.” But perhaps those of us following in Royal’s footsteps will gain courage from this final case that Guterson offers us, and become better able to make sure we do not live in what Royal describes as a dictatorship. We may be better prepared, after Guterson’s story.

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

Exciting Debut: PAST CRIMES, Glen Erik Hamilton

Reading another author's Facebook musings last month, I noticed her enthusiasm about a debut mystery from Seattle native (and now California resident) Glen Erik Hamilton. So I picked up a copy, and soon was in "can't put it down" mode. As many reviewers have noted, this is a very polished "first novel" -- no signs at all of being a debut. So I've got to wonder what Hamilton has already written, and where it's been published.

But Hamilton hasn't revealed that, in the dozen interviews of him that I've scanned. In fact, the only hint on his writing career is one comment that "moving away from Seattle" made him want to write about the city where he'd grown up. He also admitted to one interviewer that he hadn't actually started out with "I'm going to write a mystery" -- his adventure featuring Army Ranger Van Shaw, who's been in both Iraq and Afghanistan with the elite fighting corps, started with the relationship of Van and his grandfather, Dono (for Donovan; an Irish immigrant). Dono raised Van and trained him, when the boy showed an aptitude for it, in the trade of immaculately planned robberies, midsize to almost large. The kind that are worth doing, but never with a serious risk of being caught, because Dono is such a detailed planner and so careful to note his surroundings.

At first, it's not clear why Van left home -- just that when Dono sends the equivalent (for anyone else's life) of a shout for help ("Come home, if you can"), Van didn't hesitate to apply for leave and race across the globe.

His arrival is literally minutes too late to find out what's wrong. There's been a vicious attack on his grandfather, and the attacker is racing away as Van finds himself pinned to his desperately wounded relative, needing to staunch the bleeding and call for help. Soon he's telling his story to police detectives. And it's a sure thing that he'll be a suspect in spite of all this: His grandfather's shady record emerges right away, and Van's in the hot seat.

Complications quickly snarl around his legs, keeping Van from speedily tracking down the underlying truth of the situation. The police are naturally suspicious of whether Dono's attack came from brothers in crime; Dono's above-board business interests demand Van's attention; secrets abound. He's trying to think on his feet, as he discovers his grandfather's last phone call had been to Ephraim Ganz, a criminal attorney:

What Dr. Singh had asked me earlier that day came flooding back. Did my grandfather have a living will? Christ, was that why Dono had called Ganz? Had he known that trouble was coming?

My fingers gripped the phone, as if testing the limit of strength in my healed arm. Tomorrow was Monday. Ganz's office would be open. Or I could find Hollis.

Addy Proctor had summed it up for me: You have to do something. Or go nuts.

I was halfway to crazy already. It was time to start pushing in the other direction.

As always, what makes a well-plotted crime novel unforgettable is the intensity of the protagonist. Van Shaw's uneasy position, halfway between "trained young thief" and much-appreciated Army Ranger, perched on the edge of a wild land of his grandfather's secrets, turns him into an unlikely and uncomfortable sleuth, one who may decide that balancing the scales of justice is best done personally, rather than through the law.

One more good part about this book: The cover says "A Van Shaw Novel." That's a sure sign there's another one already in the pipeline. And in fact, a quick visit to the author's website (click here) gets you to his blog, which reveals the manuscript for number 2 is already headed to the publisher. Way to go!