Linwood Barclay – Bad Move (2004)
Reviewed by Yvette Banek
Science fiction writer and ex-reporter Zack Walker is a kind of modern day Chicken Little, a man on the verge of being overwhelmed by the dangers lurking outside his front door. Though only slightly obsessive, to be sure, it's enough to tip him over the edge and into a series of zany adventures in Canadian author Linwood Barclay's oh-so-funny debut novel, Bad Move. With domino-like precision, Zack's penchant for teaching various members of his family lessons in day-to-day safety, complete with dramatic re-enactments, leads to one bad move after another and before you know it, the inevitable calamity occurs.
Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive -- a truism which the well-meaning Zack has obviously decided to ignore. In a series of progressively dumb, though well-meaning, maneuvers, beginning with his appropriation of what he believes is his wife's pocketbook -- he'd warned her often enough not to leave her bag open in the shopping cart, damnit -- at the local supermarket, Zack plummets down a rabbit hole of mishaps which will leave the reader shaking his or her head in rueful amazement. Newcomer Linwood Barclay, a columnist for the Toronto Star, has an obvious satirical eye and the talent to translate this vision into a fast and funny take on suburban life in all its ignominious glory.
Beginning with one of the best opening "hooks" ever: "For years, I envied my friend Jeff Conklin, who, at the age of eleven, found a dead guy." Well, move over Jeff Conklin, a grown up Zack Walker, ex-city dweller and newcomer to the suburbs, has discovered his own "dead guy":
I'm an unlikely candidate to find a body. First of all, I'm not, unlike a police detective, in a line of work where finding a victim of foul play is a common occurrence, unless you know something about science fiction authors that I don't. And second, when I found the body, I wasn't living in some big city...I found my body in the suburbs, where, although I do not have the actual statistics to back this up, people are more likely to die of boredom than run into someone nasty. I came across a corpse in as tranquil and beautiful a spot as you could hope to find.
Originally beset by the increasing crime rate in his (un-named) city neighborhood and tired of having his two teenagers, fifteen year old Paul and seventeen year old Angie, side step hookers, used condoms and drug paraphernalia on their way home from school, Zack believed a house in the safe haven of suburbia, to be the only solution. And therein lies this dark and wickedly funny tale.
Though Zack works at home, his wife Sarah, a reporter for The Metropolitan, a daily newspaper, still toils in the city and faces a long commute, but she gingerly, swayed mostly by the rapture-inducing vision of a downstairs laundry room, goes along with the plan to move to Valley Forest Estates in the town of Oakwood. Soon the Walkers are ensconced in a house on the corner of Chancery and Greenway Lane in one of those bland, tree-less suburban developments dear to the hearts of money-grubbing land developers everywhere.
But as Zack explains, old habits die hard:
I should have felt liberated once we settled in, free of my downtown paranoia. But I still took precautions, still locked the car when I parked at the nearby plaza on a milk run, still insisted on driving Angie to her friends' houses once it was dark. Sarah, on the other hand, though she could let her guard down now that we lived in the suburbs. A key left in the front door was no big deal. Hey, there's no crime out here. No one's stuffing little girls into refrigerators. "What's the point in living in this godforsaken sterile Wonder Bread and Miracle Whip world if we have to be looking over our shoulders as much as when we lived in Crandall?" she asked...So here we are. It's been nearly two years now, and the reviews are mixed. There's no decent Chinese takeout nearby, no S(cience)F(iction) bookshops...no walking to work, no walking to school. A pound of butter means a five minute drive to the closest convenience store. We live in a house that is indistinguishable from any other on the street, prompting Paul to rename the division Clone Valley...There isn't a tree within a fifteen block radius that could cast a shadow... I wouldn't deny that there were tradeoffs, that we had given up eclectic for sterile for the sake of a ground floor laundry room. But I had something now that I couldn't count on when we lived in Crandall. I had peace of mind. We had minimized our risks.
Of course, it's never, ever, wise to tempt fate and faster than you can say "a weekend in the country," Zack's dream of a safe bubble in the 'burbs bursts into a million tiny bubblettes. Fortunately for us, Zack's keen-eyed observations are often hilarious and his bumbling, misguided attempts to keep his perplexed family safe from harm, imagined or otherwise, are priceless.
In point of fact, Zack Walker is a man beset by a sea of troubles. First, there's his new house which seems to be falling apart bit by shabbily-built bit -- obviously the house was never meant to withstand normal use -- and the odd behavior of their reluctant developer, in the person of one Don Greenway, to rectify the situation.
I told him about our most recent problem, the stained ceiling in the kitchen, caused by, I believed, water leaking from an improperly tiled and caulked shower stall on the floor above...Greenway considered what I'd said. "You're sure you've been using the shower properly?" he asked. "Because if you're not, that could be the problem." "Using it improperly? We turn it on, stand in there, and shower. If there's a wrong way to do that, we haven't figured it out yet."
Second there's the matter of his wife Sarah's propensity for leaving her keys stuck in the front door lock in plain view of any itinerant serial killer who happens by. Third, there's the matter of a few murders. Beginning with the death of Samuel Spender, whose dead body has fulfilled Zack's boyhood dream. Spender, a pesky environmentalist, had hoped to stop the eager-beaver developers of Valley Forest from despoiling a woodsy untouched section known as Willow Creek.
First time author Linwood Barclay has peopled his book with a colorful cast of suburban loonies and would-be loonies, properly zany neighbors between which Zack can bounce around his paranoia. There's Trixie the luscious accountant who lives up the block and never lacks for customers, especially of the male variety. There's Earl across the street, the swarthy, big guy with the serious tattoo and a secret in his basement, who's ready to lend some muscle and a friendly, landscaping hand. There's the aforementioned Don Greenway, the nefarious builder and his cohorts, the hapless councilman Richard Carpington and the burly goon of all trades, Rick, who has a fondness for pinching science fiction collectibles and rides around with a giant python named Quincy in the trunk of his car. There's even a Mr. Big, a local head honcho named Mr. Benedetto, the mere mention of whose name is enough to set knees to knocking. Despite Zack's initial expectations, life in Valley Forest Estates proves to be anything but dull.
I don't want to give much more away other than to say that towards the end there is a hilarious episode after a night of mayhem involving what the milkman and the cops found on a certain morning which will leave you laughing your head off. It did me.
I look forward eagerly to the next book in this new series and urge you wholeheartedly to run right out and get your hands on a copy of Linwood Barclay's Bad Move.
Posted by Yvette Banek in Book Reviews | Permalink
