The Devil's Odds: A Mystery
Right off, we know where we are. It’s the Longhorn Barroom in San Gabriel, Texas. And when: December 1942. The “who” is lawman Virgil Tucker. His introduction to the girl across the room promises a noirish banquet. “She was blessed with everything a woman’s supposed to have.” But what follows is a goulash. Some sequences are parodies, as when an old man speaks Hemingwayese: “A contempt has grown in his heart.” Virgil cues us to the joke, leaving us wondering if all Texas cops have such literary learnings. But later we meet a fellow who discourses on T. S. Eliot. Then a local who intones “If you love the land, it will take care of you.” Neither scene has a stinger in its tail. The reader feels stranded. Too bad, because the fact-based core of the book—an attempt by the Louisiana mob to grab Galveston’s gambling scene—is strong, and there’s some fine tough-mouth writing: one thug looked like “spoiled meat in a fine suit.” The uncertain tone, though, will get in the way for many crime fans. --Don Crinklaw