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Done For A Dime
Reviewed By Rogue David Corbett?s ?Done for a Dime? takes noir conventions and arranges them so flawlessly and artfully into the narrative that it takes a while for the reader to realize that he has seen it all before. Corbett is so skillful a writer that the material doesn?t matter; he has, as Ezra Pound admonished, made it new. Without donning a fedora and jawing his way through the mean streets around Oakland, California, with the tough guy jargon of a noir character on steroids, Corbett is able to incorporate into ?Done for a Dime? a seemingly open-and-shut murder investigation that leads to much larger fish; the seamy world of jazz nightclubs; hidden paternity; politicians in cahoots with anyone who could line their pockets; good cops who walk the line between right and wrong in order to get the job done; and a good old-fashioned land grab. Jazz legend Robert ?Carlisle? Strong is gunned down on the street of Rio Mirada in front of his home. Strong was such a cantankerous man that anyone could be a suspect, even his son, musician Toby Marchand. Detectives Jerry Stluka and Dennis Murchison, however, lean on gangbanger Arlie Thigpen, hoping to shake either a confession from him or information they can use to pin the crime on someone else. Arlie doesn?t budge; he won?t talk and he wants a lawyer. The reader is then treated to one of the most harrowing and illuminating tete a tetes between cop and suspect ever written. No fists, no dramatics; just the type of interrogation room brinkmanship and goodguy-badguy interplay that former PI Corbett can bring can bring to the table of crime fiction. As the investigation widens to include real estate developers, politicians on the make, street gangs trying upgrade their acts to white-collar crime, eco-terrorist fall guys, and arsonists, we begin to get an understanding of the wide range of characters and their motivations. ?Done for a Dime? is rich in characters who reveal themselves through authentic dialogue and through the point of view of the character Corbett focuses on in that particular chapter. The relationships between Toby and Nadya, his Caucasian lover, and Strong Carlisle, are complicated ones. Strong, an alcoholic, is on his last legs and needs to be watched over. His loathing of his son is lessened posthumously in his will, but while alive he has trouble forgiving him for a white girlfriend. Toby, too, has trouble with the skin color of the women he loves. Detectives Stluka and Murchison are cops who are tired. Both want to find the murderer, but only one wants the truth. Tina Navigato, who is Strong?s attorney, Richard Ferry, a well-connected sociopath with what might just pass as a conscience, and Manny Turpin, a junkie who loves to play with matches, round out ?Done for a Dime? and give it a depth and human resonance that sounds like real thing. |
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