NOTE: Two years ago I wrote the following review as part of my (now in limbo) American Eye column for Shots--the other part was Henry Chang's Chinatown. What the novels had in common was neither was published in the UK. I thought I'd reprint the L.A. Outlaws review here as a prologue to my review of Parker's The Border Lords, which will be the next post here.
I
jumped
at the chance to pick up a 'new' T. Jefferson Parker novel when I was
at the airport in New York recently, and as it turns out, that was a
good thing I did, because neither the book I bought, L.A.
Outlaws,
nor his subsequent Renegades,
has a UK publisher. This strikes me as being both unjust and amazing,
because Parker's had a string of impressive standalones (and the
three Merci Rayborn novels) published here. In fact, 2005's California
Girls, was one of the two or three best crime novels of that year.
What interests me most about Parker is the way he's willing to take
risks; Fallen
could've been extremely gimmicky, but managed to avoid that fate, and
I have a similar feeling about Outlaws.
Allison
Murrieta is a masked bandita who performs small armed robberies and
gives the proceeds to charity; she's claiming to be the descendant of
the legendary outlaw Joaquin Murietta, beheaded by a posse in 1853.
In reality, she's Suzanne Jones, a gorgeous school teacher who lives
in the countryside a long way from downtown LA. One night, about to
take down a sale of jewels, she witnesses an ambush and shootout
which leaves the stones with her, and a bad gangster on her tail.
Also on her tail is sheriff's deputy Charlie Hood, who is bedazzled
by Suzanne Jones and her muscle cars, and soon suspicious as well.
Where
Parker shines is in characterisation, and he does it here by
alternating between Suzanne/Allison in first person, and Charlie Hood
in third, which makes it easier for the reader to be carried away by
the pace of Suzanne's life of crime. And you probably need to be carried away a
little, as Charlie himself is, because otherwise you might ask
yourself how, in the modern era of surveillance cameras and
computers, she's able to keep Charlie bamboozled enough to keep the
rest of the LA County Sheriffs force off her back. But because the pace of the story is
so good, and the character so compelling, most readers will relax and
go with the flow.
Of
course it gets complicated: there are too many greedy people
involved, as is usually the case in jewel thefts, and Murietta may be
in over her head. Charlie is certainly in over his. But it is also to
Parker's credit that he resolves things with some flair, including a
bravura set-piece in a junkyard, but that the ultimate resolution is the
kind of downbeat thing that smacks of realism, and more than
justifies whatever suspension of disbelief you may have felt
was necessary to indulge Murietta's career. It's a superior piece of high
voltage action writing, a suspense thriller worthy of any on the
market, and it seems amazing to me that this is the book British
publishers would choose to leave untouched. By the way, Renegades
brings back Charlie Hood, who's an interesting study in
down-to-earth, not super-hero, cop, and I'm already looking forward
to that. It would be nice if I didn't have to go to America to read
it!
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