BOOK REVIEW: Losers Live Longer by Russell Atwood

When it comes to crime fiction I gravitate towards the classics - Chandler, Hammett, Black Mask reprints and the like. Oh, I pick up contemporary stuff here and there, but it's that early wave of hard-boiled fiction that truly wets my whistle. A great provider of vintage crime fiction re-prints is Hard Case Crime. I've delved into their contemporary crime fiction from time to time as well. And it turns out, they're not too shabby at releasing inventive and fun modern crime fiction. Case in point is the soon-to-be released (in September 2009) Losers Live Longer by Russell Atwood, an advance copy of which I was lucky enough to get my mitts on.

There's great energy to Losers Live Longer. Like many great detective stories, it begins with a phone call. Atwood creates an amazing pace in the first chapter. Our detective, Payton Sherwood, scraping by, lets the machine take the call, listens to the message before picking up and then, slowly over these opening pages, Atwood unfurls some amazing observations and excellent turns of phrases. This opening chapter sets up the story, not as an introduction but as a catalyst. Sherwood lurches forward trying to keep up as the story grows more complex and maze-like.

Though the story is complex - running the gamut from white collar criminals on the run to Russian runaways and a few washed-up drug-addled celebrities to boot - it's never convoluted. As Sherwood begins to figure things out, as he travels about downtown Manhattan (more on that later), as the bigger picture narrows to a thin straight line, his thoughts focus and his determination to not only stay alive, but see this case through to its end becomes our coda too. As events began, I wasn't sure what to make of Sherwood. Sure, I love a wise-ass detective as much as anyone, but I didn't think much of this Payton Sherwood guy. Kind of superficial personality. Too loose, maybe. Then as the plot tightens up, so does Sherwood. We see what he's made of. We feel his mettle and understand his code. More importantly, we see how his self-deprecation ("no way it could be a client" he states early on when his buzzer rings) provides the armor for the guy who spends a day and change tirelessly hopping around the East Village labyrinth that he finds himself in.

The East Village setting is a bonus for me as a current resident (hell, one death in the book happens around the corner from me) and native New Yorker. He succinctly paints a clear history of recent changes in the neighborhood, evoking the East village of another era (sometimes with a bit too much nostalgia for the gritty crime-ridden past), but mostly with a passion for people, the smells, the sounds, the buildings, that create the foundation for any great locale. This doesn't diminish the story for non-New Yorkers. In fact, it should enhance it - whereas some books just happens to take place here or there, other books, when torn at their spine, bleed their geography. Losers Live Longer bleeds New York. As with the classics, the sense of place is as important a character as the people who inhabit it, and Atwood makes the East Village come alive.

One last note - Losers Live Longer also has a tremendous final line. One of those lines that makes me smile and shake my head it's so darn good. Don't sneak a peek at it. Get there when you get there. It'll be worth it.