My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.
Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.
Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford DNF 34%
This is a gritty noir detective story set in 1922 America. But not the America we know. Rather, an alternate history America, where the mound building native civilization of central North America did not decline, as it did in our time-line. Thus there is the state of Cahokia, along the Mississippi River south of Illinois that is largely made up of Native Americas from this civilization, along with a volatile mix of black and whites - the white people being very much 1922 pre-civil rights white people, and black people of the old segregated south. Lots of world building used n this story to bring the setting in time and place alive.
My problem with this book is that Spufford took every noir trope and every bad aspect of 1920's America, and then dialed them up to 11 in this 400 page plus mystery story. I wasn't crazy about the story to begin with, but pushed on reading it for another day. However, on the third day, having read 140 pages of it, 34%, and we were still only in day two of the investigation - just to give you an idea of the pacing of this story - I decided that I had enough. I didn't care about the two detective protagonist, found the world unbelievable. I just didn't feel like forcing myself to read any more.
However, having read the first third, I can say that he had indeed, introduced just about every noir feature found in the books and movies of and about the period. There's a gruesome crime; a ritual killing, whose lurid headlines dials up racial tensions in the city. Thus it has to be "solved" fast, and in anyway possible, i.e. the stakes are at 11 right from the get-go. Then toss in stock hard drinking tough-guys, corrupt cops, the good cop-bad cop trope, the squeaky-clean asshole FBI agents, gangsters and bootleggers, various mysterious rich people, the bog-standard poor losers-types, as well as the KKK on streetcorners, touring jazz bands, grim, smoke stack factories, slaughter houses, and this alien society, all jammed together in an exaggerated caricature of the 1920's American society which is largely taken off the historical shelf, but not "roaring". As I said, it's an 11 on the trope dial.
I found this world too unbelievable, in that the existence of this civilization would certainly have altered American history far more radically than the British author has it doing. Basically, he seems to just have dropped this civilization and its people into America of the period, with a few additions - an independent Mormon nation in the west, and Russians in Alaska. The whole set up reeks of being an artificial device designed to highlight the ills of society, with a notable lack of subtlety.
Raymond Chandler is my gold standard for detective stories. His stories have plenty of corruption and grit, but he often uses it poetically, and keeps his stories grounded in everyday life. His writing is clever, his characters each have their own characters. And his stories prove that you don't need sky-high stakes to make an engaging, thought-provoking story. I like clever, understated stories, and this isn't one of those. It lacked any wit or charm. It's characters are bland and do things that don't make a lot of sense, at least to me. All in all, I didn't care about them, the mystery, the stakes or the story.
While the story sounded interesting, it turned out to be a dreary slog, though, as usual, it seems to work for a lot of people, having just under a 4 star rating on Goodreads. If you are fan of gritty noir fiction, and want something different, feel free to give it a try.
As for myself, I hopefully have a more engaging book waiting in the wings. Onward.
Wait... I don't understand how this setting works. If there's a KKK, does that mean there was still a Civil War? What side was Cahokia on? Also, does he really call it the FBI, because it was just called the Bureau of Investigation until the 1930s?
ReplyDeleteThanks again for commenting.
DeleteQuestions I had as well. In the part I read, not a lot was revealed about the world outside of the city the story is set in. The Civil War did happen, as did World War One. However, the Mormons have their own independent country in the west, and the Americans and Russians are fighting a long running war in Alaska, for some reason. Familiar historical figure of the time are present. As I said, I think much of the setting and features were created just to make statements, highlight historical injustices and such, rather than tell a story, given the exaggerated nature of them. I forget if he used the term FBI or not, but think of them as the fake government agents in the movie The Sting.
As I said in my review of The Adventures of Mary Darling, I don't like reading fiction that seems intent on educating rather than entertaining me.