Mark T. Conard -- Dark as Night (2004)
Dark as Night is a more than apt title for Mark Conard's debut novel. This dim, darkly comic story of hapless gangsters and four star cooking is a slim, sharply-written noir that is sure to please crime fans looking for a biting new read.
Morris White is the sous chef of a fancy French restaurant in South Philly; an ordinary guy trying to make a living while walking the straight and narrow path through life. Staying out of trouble becomes infinitely more difficult, though, once his ex-con half-brother Vince moves in with him.
Vince is suspected by the local mob capo of sitting on a fortune in diamonds that he heisted on his last, ill-fated robbery before he got sent up the river. Naturally, the mobster wants the diamonds for himself, and he's not interested in hearing that Vince never really stole them.
Those characters, as well as such sad sacks as Mo and Lenny, a perpetually bickering pair of hit men, are the best part of Dark as Night. The author has created some delightfully wacky players for his story, and reading about them is the real joy here.
The characters and the food, that is. It takes a good writer to make you hungry simply reading about food in a book, and that is a skill that Conard has down pat. His luscious descriptions of fine French cuisine, as well as humble Italian fare are enough to get the salivary glands working overtime.
Of course, there are other sections of Dark as Night that might put you off your feed for quite a while. When one of his hoodlums takes a drill to the kneecaps of a reluctant informant, the book is more likely to have a certain emetic effect, particularly on the more sensitive reader.
Uglytown is a small publishing company that is committed to bringing out the best in well-written, quirky crime fiction that might not otherwise find an audience. With Dark as Night, they've once again outdone themselves.
Posted by David J. Montgomery in Book Reviews | Permalink
