Daniel Woodrell "Under the Bright Lights"
No Exit Press (1 874061 31 9) £4.99
Under the Bright Lights
is a wonderful tale of murder, political corruption, greed, racial tension and betrayal.
The setting is the mythical city of St Bruno, a city split by race and history into
Frogtown, the original French settlement, Pan Fry, territory of the city's black
population, and Hawthorne Hills where the prosperous and elected heave a sigh of relief as
they escape the squalid North side of the city. The whole is bound by the murky and
treacherous expanse of the bayou, the Marais du Croche or "Crooked Swamp." The inhabitants, "were imbued with an unfriendly blend of ancestral pride, selfish toughness, and purposeful ignorance that served to produce succeeding generations of only slightly less narrow views than the generation that had laid the bricks that still paved the streets."
The hero of the story is Rene Shade, a tough, half French, half Irish cop, an ex-boxer with an older brother, Tip, who owns the Catfish Bar, (frequented by all of the sleazy characters of Frogtown who they grew up with), a mother, Monique Blanqui Shade, who runs the local pool house, and a younger brother, Francois, who has worked his way up to a position in the D.A's office. In temperament Rene falls somewhere between his brothers. He is tolerated in his older brother's bar unless he makes trouble for the customers, and sneered at by his younger brother who makes the mistake of thinking Rene no better than the characters he sometimes keeps company with. Both brothers, in their own ways, have fallen in with the corruption of the city, but Rene is doing his best to fight back.
"He was not guided by a total love of law, but he was more for it than against it, and this, he felt, made him reasonable. And that was the summit of his aspirations."
The city is thrown into chaos by the murder of Alvin Rankin, the man tipped to be the next mayor, a man raised in Pan Fry and who just happens to be black. Rene and his partner How Blanchette are assigned the case. How is a sandy-haired, fat cop who always wears a black leather trench coat he's convinced makes him look slimmer, even in the sweltering heat. Blanchette has a truly bad attitude. In stark contrast to Shade, he has no feelings of compassion for either the perpetrators or the victims of crime. It is here that Woodrell's wonderful, often witty ear for dialogue often shows itself.
At the murder scene:
"Damn clean piece of work," Shade said. His brown hair was long, combed back on top, and he brushed at it with his hand, a habit he had when distracted. "It must've been a friend, huh."
"That's a sickeningly liberal definition, there, Comrade Shade, for a guy pumps two bullets in the back of your head."
But bad attitude is the least of your worries in a town like St Bruno, corruption flows through the city like the corrupt water of the bayou in the summer heat. It flows from one end to the other, from the "low-life" in Frogtown and Pan Fry to the more prosperous South, mutating on the way and perhaps showing a more benign exterior, but not changing its heart.
Political and racial motives for the killing are obvious to everyone involved but moves are made to bring Shade on side in an attempt to represent the killing as a burglary gone wrong. When Shade feels the full force of those in high places behind the threats, he wonders whether he is working for the right side, should he have stuck with the life he was born to as an inhabitant of Frogtown? But as Blanchette remarks,
"..we didn't really have what it took for that other life, you know? Or we'd be there...
Plus, plus, we know, from knee-high on up, that all the assholes, all the assholes don't wear blue."
In St Bruno very few can be trusted, not even the people on your own side. Influence of birth and background are strong, but that background dictates that self-preservation is your only real instinct.
After the first killing, the violence in the city escalates, and Shade follows a trail of mayhem through the unyielding streets of Frogtown and further, into the depths of the Marais du Croche itself, a place anyone with any sense stays away from.
The violence in Under the Bright Lights is graphic and hard-hitting. The characters and the world they live in are so well-drawn that you can see what's coming, but can hardly bear to watch - you even hope for someone to be let off the hook, but of course, no one ever is. But this is no tale of mindless violence committed for the fun of it. Violence is necessary and as such accepted. There is an air of fatalism, even among the victims. Among these men there is little concern for justice or motivation. Violence is the only conceivable answer. The question isn't even asked anymore.
The beauty and lyricism of Woodrell's prose, often surprising in the context of the story itself, and the real feeling for the characters and lives these people live, raises Under the Bright Lights well above many other novels with similar subject matter. The tale is above all a fine, fast-moving, suspenseful tale of treachery and death, written with style and an un-erring feel for dialogue. The book has everything, wit, poetry, wisdom, feeling and insight. It's hard to believe that this can be found within the pages of one crime novel. Daniel Woodrell is a master of his craft. I can't recommend Under the Bright Lights enough. (E.A.L.)
