The other day I went to a local park, intent on finding a quiet spot to finish Ron Rash's fantastic new novel, "The Cove." Only thing is, I failed to to bring the book with me.
Fortunately, I always have an extra book or two (or ten) in my car. I recently picked up a couple of paperbacks by Donald Westlake at a second-hand store. The one I selected, "Trust Me on This," proved to be especially pertinent to my new situation. Having recently left a full-time job in journalism, it was interesting to read about a young woman just starting out in the profession.
With Westlake, of course, there are numerous twists and turns and insights. A peerless storyteller, Westlake, who died in 2008, always found a way to make the mundane and the obvious worthy of another look. "Trust Me on This," published in 1988, is about the inner workings of a tabloid newspaper. What's immediately striking is the novel's setting. It's easy to forget that 1988 was part of the Dark Ages before cell phones and the Internet. The reporters in the book use typewriters. The young reporter rents a Chevette!
That might sound dated, but Westlake's story is timeless. Here's a brief passage that illustrates his knack for the hidden detail:
"Phyllis' apartment was in a tall white box standing on end right at the water's edge. Out the broad windows of her seventh-floor living room, the Atlantic Ocean rolled and ran, grayish blue with foamy highlights in white. Her forehead against the cool glass -- the apartment was sternly air conditioned -- Sara looked down at the beach, now in the building's shadow. "That's ours?" she asked.
"It's all ours," Phyllis told her. "The whole world is ours. Everything you can see is ours. Isn't it fabulous?"
It was. The name of the building, one of an apparently endless row of apartment buildings and condos along the oceanfront, was the Sybarite, displaying a cultural striving combined with a historical shakiness not infrequent among the namers of names along the Florida coasts.
Here's a link to a story I wrote in 2009 about Westlake's last brilliant novel, "Get Real." I managed to solicit tributes from many of the writers who followed in his wake. As I recall, it was one of the easiest articles I ever wrote. Just the mention of Westlake's name brought out a galaxy of notable writers wanting to pay tribute.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/ae/music/s_632939.html
More on "The Cove" tomorrow.
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