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NoirNovels.com - A unique repository for all things noir
Their Wildest Dreams
Reviewed By Steve Nester Helen ?Mackie? Larkin, nee MacInness, is as good a mom as one could find. When the family finances go belly up in the brutal real estate climate of the early nineties, Mackie sheds her husband to save her sanity and her integrity. When the creditors come knocking with open palms, Mackie then sheds her clothes to save the house she and her teenage daughter, Lianne, call home. At the drop of a hat Mackie becomes Red, a middle-aged, groin-cramping, hotter-than-thou stripper at Buck Samsonov`s Buckeroo Strip Club in Auga Fria, Arizona. A Russian mobster with a deep fascination with American locutions, Buck is in love with America the way only a man who holds his green card and the tactics of the Robber Barons in equal esteem can. Just across the road from Mexico, the Buckeroo is the base of operations for Buck`s capitalistic dreams, legal or otherwise. Add to this Nicholas Loeb, an insecure Manhattan novelist who, at the behest of a pushy fan, travels to Agua Fria in search of material and inspiration for his PI character Timothy Bolt. As the plot rolls along, Loeb begins to veer from his research and begins to solve the actual crimes that take place. Luck and coincidence play important rolls in this character driven crime caper gone awry. Lianne finds herself romantically involved with a dude ranch cowpoke enlisted by Buck to pull of a scheme involving one of his businesses. Everything moves along as planned until Red enters the bank and helps herself to a payoff meant for someone else. Chases and hostage takings ensue with a denouement worthy of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Characters in Their Wildest Dreams never lose their power or vitality, and the dialogue, of which there is quite a bit, reinforces character development and never stoops to expository. What we need to learn of the characters is shown through action. The story moves through the strength of the characters and the creative power behind them. Serendipity is a word Buck writes down to study at a later date; and the coincidences and connections between characters and subplots are so seamlessly sewn together that the reader`s ability to believe the plot is never strained. Agua Fria translates to `cold water`, and let it suffice to say that plenty of it is thrown on the big plans in Their Wildest Dreams. |
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