Pushkin Vertigo, 288 pages, $18.95
Emma Viskic has crafted a tale full of noir touches, but also full of the frailty and kindness of humans. It’s a soft and hard book at the same time. That holds true for Cal Zelic, the hero of this story, and it holds for Francesca “Frankie” Reynolds, his partner, and Kat, his ex-wife. Anton has had problems with drugs. He may be straight right now, or he may be in thrall. What becomes an issue is whether he has had anything to do with the death of Gary “Gaz” Marsden, a cop and a childhood friend who freelanced with Frankie and Cal’s security services business.
Caleb is found holding the body of his friend amidst a lake of blood. He has trouble communicating with the police, whom he called, about how Gaz called him and how he then found Gaz’ body. The confusion is not just because Cal is in shock but also because Cal is mostly deaf. He took years of speech therapy and people don’t realize he is hearing impaired. Cal is stubbornly vain about trying to communicate without signing.
The police begin to look deeply into Cal’s potential involvement in Gaz’ death. Wait. What? thinks Cal, I didn't kill Gaz! It will be to his benefit to begin his own investigation, an investigation that leads to a lot of banging up of his psyche and his body. Frankie climbs on board and they begin with investigating just about anybody with whom Gaz had contact.
Why had Gaz called Ant? Who called Gaz from a public payphone? Is Kat in danger? Was Gaz bent? Did “Grey-face” kill him? Who is Scott? What what what did Gaz get himself into? Someone is now after Cal and will use extreme means to get the information he has. But what information does Cal have, he repeatedly wonders.
Just so you know it’s set in Australia (and not Resurrection Bay, Alaska!), there are sentences like this one: “All those gubba girls staring daggers at me, wondering why you were going out with a golliwog….”
There’s also a slight bit of humor. At one point Frankie goes all kung fu on someone, leading Cal, the main character, to an inescapable conclusion.
[Frankie says:] ‘I’ve picked up a few of your ninja tricks — felt the breeze as he moved. Didn’t even think, just turned around and whacked him on the head with a bottle. Followed it up with a knee to the balls on his way down.’
He had the same fighting style as a 57-year-old woman. Excellent.
“Resurrection Bay” was quite an entertaining peek into a fictional Melbourne underbelly. If Emma Viskic is planning on turning this into a series, Cal seriously is going to have to pull his socks way up and get on with it, because he had one heck of a grueling time in this book. (Also, does Australia have socialized medicine? If not, Cal should invest in a good medical policy.)
No comments:
Post a Comment