Coffee break after the photo session. What do you expect from merfolk, anyway?
Kirk Russell's Dead Game, the book pictured above, is one of the best crime novels I know. It's about sturgeon poaching in California, but it's a real novel, so it's also about a lot more than that. Great qualities: major characters, minor characters, landscape, plot, and pacing. This is the third of Russell's John Marquez crime novels, and while I love all of them (with a particular appreciation for the first, Shell Games, about abalone poaching), Dead Game shows Russell at his best.
This novel moves, my friends; it has momentum, a quiet momentum that builds continually and surprisingly. The novel carried me along, and yet caught me off guard too. It's thorough and thoughtful, yet in an energetic, constantly pressing way. It has Russian gangsters, sure, but it's not a "Russian gangster thriller." It's better than that. Russell is better than easy generalizations or formulas. So many crime novels bluster, but this one doesn't. I'm not sure how to put the best effects into words, but I've been rereading this novel once or twice a year since it was published in 2005. The great American novelist Richard Ford is on record how he learned much about narrative transitions, about getting from scene to scene, from F. Scott Fitzgerald in his The Great Gatsby; anyone can learn about narrative economy from Kirk Russell.
My copy happens to be autographed by the author. (I am happy that I've been able to tell him personally that I admire and appreciate his work. Others would care more about that John Hancock enhancing the market value of a first edition; I read and wear out worthy books, first edition or not.)
Dead Game opens with the murder of a fish, though you may not realize that's what he's giving us. Eventually, you have to see the crime. The book also opens with the apparent abduction or murder of an informant into the sturgeon poaching and illegal caviar processing . . . so there's plenty of action from the start. Russell's main character John Marquez, the leader of a Fish and Game undercover team, rewards your attention as we watch how he handles both the criminal investigations and his personal relationships with his wife and stepdaughter. Marquez's character enables Russell to explore the themes of integrity, commitment, and friendship.
Kirk Russell understands the evil and the frailty as well as the courage and strength in humanity. He also understands the vitality of life beyond the human sphere, and yet the human responsibility towards such life, those creatures. Aren't those qualities you want in a novelist?
Dead Game: check it out. Check out his other novels as well. Learn more here.
P.S. I'm looking forward to his non-fiction writing too.
