There is absolutely nothing wrong and a whole right about the happy relaxation a well-written private dick story can give the reader. I’ve certainly had decades of delight from them, ever since I was twelve or thirteen or so and noticed that there was this Mickey Spillane fellow whose books seemed to take up most of the bookstore shelf down and across from Agatha Christie. Later there was Dashiell Hammet’s Continental Op, never named as anything other than that, Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, and the list goes on from there.
Howard Shrier’s private detective Jonah Geller, now smoothly in stride in a third novel, hits the sweet spot in all the attributes a reader expects of the genre. In a rough order of rising importance, Geller runs a small office, is single, has had relationships and is all in favour of them except that the Work tends to be a deterrent to romance, is fast with the fists yet focused in the head, knows the sort of rough characters who can come in handy in a firefight, and like the good hunter, he only kills out of necessity while taking no pleasure from the act.
Still, just because one knows all the notes on a piano doesn’t make one a pianist. The skill for the author is in placing these brilliant yet troubled men in intriguing situations which in turn entice the reader to play along. By ‘play along’ I don’t necessarily mean solving a mystery. In the case of Boston Cream, Geller is hired by parents in his home city of Toronto to find their son who disappeared in Boston two weeks’ earlier. There really is no mystery. The path of the novel is set by the hundredth page and the question in the reader’s mind is neither ‘What happened?’ or ‘Who made it happen?’; rather it is ‘How will he solve this?’ If I just told you that the disappearing son is a promising surgical intern graduated from Harvard Medical School and there is a suggestion of money needs and shady dealings in the sale of human organs, I’m pretty sure you can fill in the blanks of the plot with a probable 80% accuracy. I have faith in the inventive capacities of my readers.
No, all the fun is in the finding. Geller reminds me of when Elliott Gould played Philip Marlowe in The Long Goodbye (which is worth a look if you haven’t seen). There is the same troubled Jewish character hidden within the action man exterior. Jonah Geller is the younger brother of a highly successful brother and feels a bit of the black sheep. He does not so much worry about that and other problems, such as a post-concussive disorder, he frets them. As such, it’s not laid on too thick and enables some engaging back-and-forths in Boston Cream between Geller and a rotund Rabbi – who of course has a hot daughter. This is private eye fiction which is a world where women must be desirable.
If I’m making Boston Cream sound highly conventional, then I’m doing my job right. The villains are scum for whom one does not shed a single tear in anticipation of their (please let it be grisly) demise. The police are as mean and dumb as a hammerhead shark with a fish hook in its mouth. They must not be trusted with Important Information and they never, ever connect a cluttered trail of bodies back to – Yoo Hoo! – the private dick from out of town who’s been talking to them.
So yes, Shrier’s book is conventional and that is a compliment. Genres exist for one simple reason: people like them. And what they like is for all the keys on the xylophone to be struck in a pleasing sequence. Like a great wrestling match, the audience wants those expected moments and characters to appear. When I was taught screen and television writing, the instructor made a firm point about the latter, ‘You must service your audience’s needs.’ Someone must have told Howard Shrier that or something similar and he evidently took it to heart. He delivers a cracking good entertainment that I think Dashiell Hammett himself might have said to its author, ‘Nice job, kid.’ — Hubert O’Hearn, By The Book
