Review of Bill James's Vacuum

Vacuum by Bill James

Nature abhors a vacuum. All characters in Bill James's Vacuum, the 28th novel in his farcical-noir series, are in complete agreement about that. The clamorous debate is about how Nature will fill it.

In James's previous series book, 2011's I Am Gold, Manse Shale's wife Naomi and son Laurent are gunned down as Naomi drives Shale's Jaguar to school. Grief-stricken, Shale has retired as CEO of his hugely profitable "recreational firm" (a comprehensive drug-trafficking business) and immersed himself in religion. He's delegated all responsibility to his No. 2 man, Michael Redvers Arlington. Now, when Arlington's unbribable bodyguard, Edison L. Whitehead, calls Arlington "a great man, great intermittently," he means Arlington is very capable when he hasn't morphed, without warning, into General Francisco Franco. When Arlington is Francisco Francoing ("F.Fing"), he forgets the present and does things like phoning the German Defense Ministry to request the bombing of Guernica by Field Marshall Goering's aircraft. Arlington's many quick shuttles between sense and lunacy create instability and a precarious leadership void, in which ruthless people will jockey to fill it. They won't care if innocent people get hurt.

This danger is clear to the new Chief Constable, Sir Matthew Upton; ACC Desmond Iles; DCS Colin Harpur; and DCI Francis Garland. For years, the egomaniacal and amoral Iles has turned a blind eye to two separate drug-selling operations in his unnamed seaport in southwestern England: Shale's and Ralph ("Panicky Ralph") Ember's. As long as people ("especially younger women with brilliant arses") can stroll unhurriedly everywhere in his domain, all is well, because the greatest police objective after "stuff the Home Office," is "no blood on the pavement."

In Iles's view, drugs tenant the vacuum that Nature abhors. There will always be drugs––no matter how harsh the laws against them––and it's better that the dealing be confined to one area of the city, where it can be "expertly supervised by fine, though freewheeling, grossly libidinous, folk like Harpur here and Garland. Plus, of course, the Drugs Squad." [There are few differences, and many similarities or parallels, between police and crooks in James's series. Like Arlington, Iles is clever, but has spells of derangement––in his case, "flashback cuckold-fits," consisting of shout-screams and trembles, "producing a strobe effect from the silver buttons of his uniform"––when something reminds him that Harpur and Garland had affairs with his wife, Sarah. As if sharing brain spasms weren't enough, Arlington likes the "nice conviviality" of sharing Honorée, a prostitute, with Iles.]

Ralph Ember is a young Charlton Heston look-
alike; people expect him to act like El Cid

Sir Matt holds a different opinion about the vacuum. Ember is a drugs purveyor and a leading suspect in the unsolved murders of Naomi and Laurent Shale. Shale usually drove Laurent and his daughter, Matilda, to school, and his wife could have been killed by mistake. The deaths are a chance to destroy Shale's and Ember's drug operations. Towards this end, Sir Matt authorizes a search of Ember's estate, Low Pastures.

Sir Matt has upset the drugs-trade equilibrium lovingly created and maintained by Ember, Shale, and Iles. Criminals don't know if Ember and Iles had a falling out, if Sir Matt has taken away decision-making from Iles, or if Iles has changed his mind about the drug trade since the killings. Ember doesn't want to look like he can be kicked around. Ember's wife, Margaret, worries that, whether or not he was involved in the Shale murders, their two daughters may be targeted for retaliation. Whitehead tries to control Arlington's F.Fing. The employees farther down Shale's corporate ladder start muttering about the Peter Principle, which states that one is promoted to his or her level of incompetence. Karen Lister, the live-in girlfriend of Shale's current No. 2 man, gets nervous.

Southwestern England

On the police side: Iles, who resents being a congenital sidekick, and who has been "pasteurized" and "neutered" by the new Chief, now hopes to nurse Sir Matt away from his "new-brooming" towards "clarity" about drugs. Harpur––not by nature dull, but nearly always "jet-lagged by the necessity of keeping Iles from calamity," battered by the advice of his two teenage daughters, and distracted by his younger girlfriend, Denise, who's become intrigued by the "zipless fucks" of Fear of Flying––becomes zombified by indecision. All of these people, and others, are sucked into a situation they can't completely understand or control as Nature rushes to re-establish equilibrium.

*******

Colin Harpur is a fair-haired
Rocky Marciano almost-look-alike

Bill James's Harpur and Iles series––like William Marshall's Yellowthread Street Station books––is original and unique. It's a ferociously dark and funny British police procedural characterized by very skillful plotting, an atmosphere of brooding apprehension, and biting repartee between endearingly eccentric characters, who inhabit a bleak and violent world, where boundaries between good and evil are blurred. The dialogue is a treasure trove of witty wordplay. For example, Iles, who controlled and finally destroyed former Chief Constable Mark Lane, says of his new Chief, "In a while, I think I might become quite fond of Sir Matt. He's someone who knows his own mind and yet is not ashamed of it. I admire that kind of courage." Later, Iles asks after Sir Matt, "the poor, articulate, benighted, beknighted sod."

It took half a dozen books after You'd Better Believe It, the 1985 debut, for James to become thoroughly comfortable with his odd couple––the acerbic Iles and Harpur, who knows exactly how to handle him––but good books in the 29-book series are easy to find. Try Pay Day, in which neither criminals nor police know whether they can trust Chief Inspector Richard Nivette; or Wolves of Memory, which finds Harpur and Iles protecting a rambunctious informant. I highly recommend Harpur and Iles to people who are experiencing a black humor/noir vacuum.

The Goldilocks Principle

You probably remember the fairy tale about Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I recently read in Wikipedia about the original 1837 tale by British poet Robert Southey:

"In Southey's tale, three anthropomorphic male bears – 'a Little, Small, Wee Bear, a Middle-sized Bear, and a Great, Huge Bear' – live together in a house in the woods. Southey describes them as very good-natured, trusting, harmless, tidy, and hospitable. Each bear has his own porridge bowl, chair, and bed. One day they take a walk in the woods while their porridge cools. An old woman (who is described at various points in the story as impudent, bad, foul-mouthed, ugly, dirty and a vagrant deserving of a stint in the House of Correction) discovers the bears' dwelling. She looks through a window, peeps through the keyhole, and lifts the latch. Assured that no one is home, she walks in. The old woman eats the Wee Bear's porridge, then settles into his chair and breaks it. Prowling about, she finds the bear's beds and falls asleep in Wee Bear's bed. The climax of the tale is reached when the bears return. Wee Bear finds the old woman in his bed and cries, 'Somebody has been lying in my bed, – and here she is!' The old woman starts up, jumps from the window, and runs away never to be seen again."

The version of the fairy tale I'm familiar with, and I'd bet you are, too, features a little girl instead of an old woman who visits the house. The little girl, in addition to being very curious, is very fussy and she tests three bowls of porridge, three chairs and three beds before deciding in each case that the Wee Bear's is just right.

The Goldilocks Principle (the condition of being just right) applies to my reading, too. This can create some real problems, trying to find a book that feels like the perfect fit for my mood. A few weeks ago, Georgette suggested using fortune cookie fortunes to find that book and I enjoyed trying that method. Usually, however, I employ the same method Goldilocks used, trying some on for size until I find the right one. Given one situation, here is a book that was just right for me.

I had a draining day at work. After dinner, my two boys backtalked when I told them it was time for homework. I wanted to respond with a little impudence of my own but instead I picked up a book by George V. Higgins, Penance for Jerry Kennedy, and vicariously enjoyed all the adult sass.

Higgins was an assistant U. S. Attorney for Massachusetts and dealt with organized crime. He later worked as a criminal defense lawyer, defending clients such as Eldridge Cleaver and G. Gordon Liddy. As a writer, he is most famous for his books about Boston's lowlife, including The Friends of Eddie Coyle (which I'll tell you about on Saturday), The Digger's Game and Cogan's Trade.

He also wrote a series about a nice guy named Jerry Kennedy, whose criminal-defense practice after 20 years is repetitive. Kennedy says, "Half of what it repeats, from my clients' mouths and mine, can be reduced to those two short words: 'Big money, Mister Kennedy, he promised me big money.' The other half, or roughly that, is people who have created their own troubles with some kind of intoxicants, either because they did not get their big money or because they in fact did.... For me, in my middle age, child molesters and wife-beaters are a welcome change, people who did evil things because of warped passions that did not involve money. And, of course, I meet them all because I'm out for their money."

In the second book of the series, Penance for Jerry Kennedy, Kennedy's client, personal accountant and good friend Lou Schwartz, has been convicted for his income-tax preparation for mobster Nunzio Dinapola. Schwartz refused to cooperate with the prosecutor's scheme to nail Dinapola, so Schwartz was prosecuted instead. Kennedy admits he is not at his best when he puts on a show that he wouldn't believe were he the one watching it and therefore he couldn't convince the jury that Schwartz didn't lie when he signed Dinapola's 1040 form claiming that as the tax preparer, he believed the numbers and sources of income to be true and accurate. (As Schwartz tells Kennedy, "You think Nunzio is going to tell me to put down the barbut games? You think I would ask him where he got the money? You think I would like him to have me killed? Of course it is lies.") Schwartz is going to jail for two years and Kennedy is miserable about it. To add to his unhappiness, the IRS is now turning its attention to him because he's Schwartz's attorney; his wife Mack is arguing with him about money; his secretary is procrastinating; and his mentor, big-shot lawyer Frank McDonald, isn't eager to help him. Kennedy, in his search for a new accountant, falls into the hands of Bertram Magazu, which may not be a good thing.

Higgins's ear for dialogue, ability to create an entertaining courtroom setting and skill at characterization are remarkable. He can define characters in just a line—"David is the sort of guy that you jab every chance that you get, just because he deserves so many more shots than he'll ever get in this world that God would punish you for wasting one." His plots are sometimes filtered through a torrential digression of dialogue and the narrator's internal musings but then one doesn't read Higgins's books for plot alone. If you appreciate a quick-witted, insightful, somewhat world-weary but Mr. Nice Guy narrator, these Jerry Kennedy books are for you. They're not for readers who can't tolerate X-rated talk. For readers who can, they will make you laugh out loud. You don't have to be a legal mysteries fan to enjoy them. I particularly recommend them to people who like Michael Connelly's sleazy lawyer Mickey Haller. Start with the entertaining first book in the series, Kennedy for the Defense.

I'd love to hear about an experience that prompted your attempt to nail down that just-right book. What did you end up reading?