The Web Haunt of Ryan K Lindsay

I’ve discovered an author this year and he’s gone two for two. It’s rare that an author pleases me just as much with two separate works. If he gets a third he’ll officially be in. Sometimes an author will prove rock solid gold, and near all they write is a style you appreciate. Sometimes an author will have one or two works that go well, but then you lose the writer, nothing else of theirs jumps off the page to you and the relationship is over.

I’ve just met Day Keene and I hope for the start of a beautiful friendship. Earlier this year, I read The Brimstone Bed and it was pretty bloody good. A new guy in town gets framed for a murder at a sex party. Mayhem ensues. What wasn’t to like? I liked the style of Keene’s writing, I liked his set ups. As far as olde school pulp went, he nailed it. So, given the chance, I picked up another offering of his in Hard Case Crime and read it. It too was hugely enjoyable.

Home Is The Sailor is a simple yet twisty read. It follows Swen ‘Swede’ Nelson as he sets ashore with years worth of money and is on his way to Minnesota when he gets waylaid on a drunk and winds up in some hot girl’s bed. She won’t sleep with him, but she’ll marry him. Just like all pulps the woman is as needy as anything else and the man is as tough as steel. As the story progresses we eventually get a manslaughtered body that needs disposing of, rum that needs to be consumed a lot, and a back story involving a mobster and a stripper who killed a rich guy, took his cash, and were never seen again. Swede is caught in the middle as cops and Feds question around him and in the end we unravel the mystery and figure out all of the character motivations.

One of the things I like about this book is the ending. Someone dies, and it’s not gore-porn horrible, but I didn’t quite see it coming and when you actually picture the scene it is just sad how it happens. You don’t expect that person to shuffle loose but then it happens just like death happens any old day, stupidly and quickly. I like that Keene has the balls to just add hat denouement to the end and stick by it. The story is much better for it.

Keene’s writing is terse and simple yet conveys a thousand images in each chapter. There’s plenty of rum, plenty of breasts (I’m surprised at how much these old books make the girls take their kit off), and a fair few knocks of violence. Swede hits one guy and Keene describes it as thus:

I hit him with my left hand. So hard his pig eyes filled with desperation.

I don’t know about you, but those two sentences tell me something. Keene has the ability to start a chapter with a paragraph that just hooks you.

Sometime during the day a bee had flown into the car. Warmed by the heat, it crawled up the door on my side and across the dash. Then it began to buzz annoyingly in the lower bevel of the windshield on Corliss’ side of the car.

It had been night, then morning, now it was evening again. So what? I was having a hell of a time, even for a sailor, spending my honeymoon with a bottle in Cottage Number 3 of the Purple Parrot Tourist Court and Bar on U.S. Highway 101, just north of San Diego.

The day had been hot and long. A lot of things had happened. Most of them to me. None of them nice. The night wind blowing in the windows of the car felt good.

The Mission Hotel was well named. Most of the couples who checked in were looking for something. It was on the fringe of the Mexican district, not far from San Diego’s version of Skid Row.

The office of the Federal Bureau in San Diego was small but comfortable. Softly-spoken, well-dressed, efficient counterparts of Green spoke into phones, made notes, or just sat looking pleased.

It’s an impressive feat that Keene can give such short description but with such verve that you instantly know where you are and what it feels like.

I would have to say one of my favourite scenes came after the marriage of Swede to Corliss. She’s just as sad widow who wants to wait until marriage, she says she needs love with hers. So they get hitched down Tijuana way, but then comes the consummation and finally we, and Swede, see that not all is as it should be.

She was my wife. I had killed a man for her. I wanted her. I took her. For a moment I hoped I was wrong. But I wasn’t. We were just two people in bed.
I glanced sideways in the mirror at the moving reflection. Corliss’ moans and pretended passions were as false as her sighs had been. All the new Mrs Nelson was doing was going through the motions.
She might have been chewing gum or paying a grocery bill.
The magic of the madness on the cliff was gone. All there was between us was flesh.
That’s one terrible marriage night. And it changes the game as she had been coy and nubile up until that point.

The very last chapter, two pages, just brings it all down into nearly noir territory. Swede is going to set back to sea, even though he has another hot young bird (doesn’t every hard guy in these books?) waiting and wanting him. He sets her up, and you feel like you might be left with a light way back at the end of his tunnel but he gets to the wharf and sees another of those common women who prey on sailors and their misery.
“Hello, Sailor. Lonely?”
Yeah, he is. Extremely lonely in a world where he felt love once and it was more false than a seven dollar note. The guy barely knows how to feel, and you get the feeling he just won’t ever again. It’s bleak and it’s harsh, but it’s kind of true. It’s character progression in that his arc went up but has now possibly sunk lower than when he started.

It’s a great read and I cannot wait to make it a threepeat for Mr Day Keene. I love that he uses poem lines as titles and I’ve liked the covers on his work so far. Brimstone Bed is still something that I could hang on my wall. I love that cover so much.

Posted on November 18th, 2009 by ryan
Filed under: books