Chocolate Lizards by
Cole Thompson
pbk out November 99
(No Exit Press)
at £6.99
Yee-haw! Get ready for a piece of heads-down, no-nonsense "West Texas oil-field Gothic". Well, that's how no less a big name writer than Larry McMurtry describes Cole Thompson's debut novel. The estimable people at No Exit Press characterise it as "oil rig noir". Then again, they have a penchant for dubious collocations containing the word noir - remember last year's"surf noir" novel? I beg to differ with both parties. Chocolate Lizards is far too funny to be Gothic and far too amiable to be noir. But who cares about categorisations? It's a good laugh and a good read, which puts it well ahead of most novels I come across.
What we've got is a classic juxtaposition of well-educated, young naif and hard-living, schooled-in-the-university-of-hard-knocks oil man. The former, Erwin Vandeveer (a.k.a. Harvard), gets taken on as a "rat killer" by the latter, Merle Luskey. (Rat killer means fixer or brains of the outfit, in case you're wondering.) What follows is a riotous tale of scheming, boozing, bamboozling and - yes - oil drilling. Merle is up against a bent sheriff, a dodgy businessman and a series of gargantuan hangovers, while Harvard finds time to get acquainted with the chocolate lizards of the title (buy the book to find out what they are). The first-person, present tense narrative is bolstered by buckets of over-the-top dialogue and sound effects, and there's no shortage of wise-cracking, lunatic supporting characters - including a well-supported blonde by the name of Tex-Ann.
If you're into comic crime this should be right up your dirt track. Normally I can take it or leave it, but I'm happy to make an exception in this case. Instead of violence, there's a pipe-line of bad language, plenty of eccentric humour and a genuine feel-good factor.
Nice one, No Exit. Just drop the noir label - this chocolate definitely isn't dark.
Chocolate Lizards by
Cole Thompson