Review “Not a through street” by Ernest Larsen – #13books

I bought thirteen books last time I was in London. The rule (already broken (1)) is not to buy or borrow (2) any more until I have read and reviewed all thirteen. Here’s reviews of the first, second and third.

The fourth book was one that I read back in the 1990s or so – I remembered nothing of it other than it was smart and tough.

I was right – It’s (still) smart and tough. First person narrated, Emma Hobart is a former anti-war activist driving a cab in 1974 Manhattan. An old comrade-in-(anti)arms and erstwhile lover, Hoyt, is nosing around some kind of corporate conspiracy and recent death (suicide? murder?) of a congressional aide.

Here’s a representative quote –

I drove the rest of the long hot night, earning money, trying to cruise out of the range of over violence, thugs and ex-lovers. On green I moved, on red I stayed. What the Motor City generals smilingly call an accident could easily cancel my subscription to existence (as Tony would say). Beyond the smash-up – product turnover, that is – there was the smooth, subtle and attractive violence of the upper middle class emerging in scattered waves from show, theater, bar and other playgrounds. They raise their well-tailored arms so gracefully that no notice need be taken of how much room these few take up on this small island, no conception need be formed about what violence is required to secure them the wide elbowroom they think they deserve and delude themselves they have earned. They pay me one after the other and tip me and joke about the female hackie.

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There’s the usual gang of ex-cops marauding about, failsons (before the term was invented), double-crosses and a nice climatic showdown between Emma and the Big Bad, though he does conveniently get a bit Basil Exposition.

There’s a nice bitter-sweet resolution. I liked this about how these things turn out (shades of Dire Straits’ classic song “Private Investigations.”

I stopped reading the papers as soon as I realized that what had happened was both too complicated and too full of unflattering references to people in power for the press to handle in three hundred words or less, except in terms of scandal. The story itself was one thing, but its implications were another. These were never raised. What was sold on newsstands was a lurid tale of murder, accidental murder and revenge.

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It’s not quite Raymond Chandler (as one of the blurbs has it), but what is? It’s a pity that Larsen, for whatever reason, didn’t turn this into a series (it was clearly set up as such). Well worth your time, if you like political detective fiction….

Footnotes

(1) In my defence, the ones I bought, for a quid each, were mint – a book of Bill Shakespeare’s sonnets with cheat notes for each, and an edited volume of contemporary (to 1962) verse.

(2) And I borrowed an Isaac Asimov collection of short stories. Who can argue with that?