Briarpatch

Crime, Corruption and Politics, Served Extra Dry

First published in 1984, Briarpatch by Ross Thomas won the Edgar Award for best novel. The Germans were also fans; they awarded it the Deutscher Krimipreis two years later.

Ross Thomas is the master of sardonic tales of political intrigue and corruption.

Synopsis

Detective Felicity Dill climbs into her car, turns the ignition and dies in a burst of flames when the car bomb rigged under it explodes.

Her brother, the political fixer and investigator, Ben Dill returns from Washington to his home city to bury her. Dill brings his work with him. He has to take a deposition from his childhood friend, Jake Spivey. Spivey is a CIA agent turned arms trader. He made a pile of money selling weapons after the Vietnam war, and Dill’s political masters on a US Senate subcommittee are raking through his past.

Dill discovers that his sister has left him a large house and a larger life insurance policy. The house is worth far more than a twenty-eight-year-old police detective could ever afford, and the life insurance policy suggests that Felicity had guessed her fate.

Was Felicity Dill on the take? If she was, she was far from alone.

Review

In Briarpatch, Ross Thomas spins out two intertwining plots, the murder of a policewoman and the investigation into an ex-CIA agent. The money the agent has amassed through arms dealing has become a stepping stone to political power.

Ross Thomas builds on these two themes, criminal investigation and domestic politics, to form the backbone of the story. He fleshes out that backbone with a complex web of relationships, some from the past and some from the present. These relationships are based on trust and loyalty, and Thomas forces his protagonist to decide where he should place his: with his government or friends.

Much of the hot, dry tension of the book comes from its setting, an arid, dusty, heat-hazed city. Thomas never identified it, but he probably based it on his home town, Oklahoma City. The temperature never drops below 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 °C), and people’s nerves are similarly scorched.

The redheaded homicide detective stepped through the door at 7:30 A.M. and out into the August heat that already had reached 88 degrees. By noon the temperature would hit 100, and by two or three o’clock, it would be hovering around 105. Frayed nerves would then start to snap and produce a marked increase in the detective’s business. Breadknife weather, the detective thought. Breadknives in the afternoon.

As well as all the action, twists and turns, corruption and murder you’d need in a thriller, Thomas writes with subtle humour. He christens the book’s slightly uptight and straight female protagonist, Anna Maud Singe, with the nickname “Smokey”. I hope I would have had the wit to do the same.

Ross Thomas has been named “America’s best storyteller”, admittedly by his publishers, but his adult plots, reserved writing style and dry, beautifully descriptive prose support the claim. More than that, Thomas is funny. This book contains the best description of a kiss of life (CPR) I have ever read. — Old men taste bad.

Excerpt

“Damn, I’m sorry it’s late,” Snow said. “It just clean slipped my mind.”

The redheaded detective smiled slightly for the second time. “Sure, Harold.”

Harold Snow smiled back. It was a sheepish smile, patently false, that somehow went with Snow’s long narrow face, which the detective also found to be rather sheeplike, except for those clever coyote eyes.

Still wearing his smile, Harold Snow then said what he always said to the homicide detective, “Well, I guess you gotta go round up the usual suspects.”

And as always, the detective didn’t bother to respond, but said only, “See you, Harold,” turned, and started down the cement walk toward the dark-green two-year-old five-speed Honda Accord that was parked the wrong way at the curb. Snow shut the door to his apartment.

The detective unlocked the two-door Honda, got in, put the key in the ignition, and depressed the clutch. There was a white-orange flash, quite brilliant; then a loud crackling bang, and a sudden swirl of thick greasy white smoke. When it cleared, the Honda’s left door was hanging by one hinge. The detective sprawled halfway out of the car, the red hair now a smoking clump of fried black wire. The left leg below the knee ended in something that looked like cranberry jelly. Only the greenish grey eyes still moved. They blinked once in disbelief, once again in fear, and then, after that, the detective died.

Briarpatch by Ross Thomas