If you like a protagonist who commits
murder, parricide, incest and just about everything else in
between bouts of heavy drinking, this is the novel for you. If, on
the other hand, you prefer a flawed hero with redeeming virtues, a
watertight plot and some subtlety in human relationships, then
steer well-clear.
The problem with IN HIS SHADOW is that its
author stays too completely in the shadow of his mentor, Jim
Thompson, to whom the book is dedicated. Its anti-hero, Johnny
Lane, is a violent, amoral, stop-at-nothing private detective who
treats women with contempt.
Lane can only solve problems by running
away from them or by resorting to violence and murder. As a
narrator, he's very unreliable, feeding us information that is
later corrected and amplified. He also has the irritating habit of
referring to his "faithful readers", stepping outside
the novel to remind us that we are only involvedin
a fictional tale.
On the credit side are some vivid
confrontations, some neat twists, some weirdly interesting
characters and an occasional burst of arresting dialogue. But they
do not compensate for a novel that is gratuitously nasty and that
has such a shaky grasp on its own time scheme. Jim Thompson was a
master of terse, fast-moving, noir thrillers. He also knew how to
pace a novel. Dave Zeltserman slows the action at key moments with
flashbacks and is unable to match the laconic and wise-cracking
style of his role model.
There are enough good things in the book
to show that the author has real talent, but he needs to find a
voice of his own, instead of trying to imitate someone else's.
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