Duane Swierczynski - Secret Dead Men (2005)
It is inevitable in genre fiction that a certain sameness will characterize many of the books within a given category. Nowhere is this truer than with the detective novel, an area of fiction riddled with staleness, lethargy and cliche.
That is why it is such a treat to discover a book that takes the traditional forms and puts a unique spin on them, reflecting the mind of an author with both new ideas and an idiosyncratic personality. Secret Dead Men, the debut novel from Philadelphia City Paper editor Duane Swierczynski, is just such a book.
The hero of Secret Dead Men is Del Farmer, a private investigator of a very strange sort. Farmer doesn't collect clues; he collects the souls of the recently dead, hoping they can help him with his investigations.
He stashes these souls away in his mind, in a place he calls the Brain Hotel. There the disembodied spirits while away their hours watching television and hanging out in the Brain Bar. Occasionally, Farmer calls on them for help, something they almost never can provide. If anything, they just end up causing him more trouble.
Of course, Farmer can sympathize, as he himself is dead, his spirit having been harvested by the previous occupant of the body, another investigator who taught Farmer the ins and outs of the soul collection business before hanging it all up to move on to the great beyond.
Farmer has a mission in life that keeps him going despite all the obstacles he faces. He is trying to track down and eliminate a shadowy organized crime group known as "The Association," the same outfit that killed him in the first place.
Unfortunately, the harder he digs, the less it seems he knows. The souls he keeps stashed away in the Brain Hotel are no help, not even the sulking former FBI agent or the aggressively earnest ex-mob hit man.
Farmer's investigation eventually takes him to Philadelphia during the Bicentennial celebration in 1976. He takes up residence in the city, hoping the tenuous trail he has followed will finally pay off.
Of course, he finds his share of animosity in the City of Brotherly Love, including several near-misses with the bad guys, the most dramatic of which is a shoot-out on the steps of the Museum of Art. (Thankfully, Rocky wasn't there working out, although that was around the same time he was training for his big fight.)
As you have probably gathered by now, Secret Dead Men is not your ordinary mystery novel. That is what makes it so refreshing. It is offbeat, quirky and confident, filled with fascinating creations and memorable scenes, all of which reveal Swierczynski to be a talented newcomer worth watching.
There are times when Swierczynski's story risks becoming a little too odd; it certainly takes some getting used to, especially at the beginning. Its quirkiness also works against it in some ways, preventing the story from generating the level of suspense and momentum that one would ordinarily hope to find in a detective novel.
But this isn't really the type of book that you read for the plot, so problems like that are only minimal detractions. It is the writing and the characters that draw you in and keep you turning the pages, and they are more than good enough to maintain interest.
If Secret Dead Men is any indication of the types of books we can expect to see in 2005, it's going to be a very interesting - and pleasurable - year.
Posted by David J. Montgomery in Book Reviews | Permalink
