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NoirNovels.com - A unique repository for all things noir
Sky Full Of Sand
Reviewed By Steve Nester When bank VIP Clive Renseller gets his freak on one fateful night he doesn?t count on it being his last. His death opens the door for Uriah Walkinghorse, a thoughtful bodybuilder on the decline, to plumb the depths drug smuggling, the philosophy of money, race, and the nature of love and family on the porous U.S.-Mexican border where evil on one side of the Rio Grande can cross over and become a virtue on the other. Rick DeMarinis?s eighth novel, ?Sky Full of Sand?, is a noir so integrated into the time and place which it depicts that it is an incredible naturalistic narrative of lives that might be too incredible to believe, yet you do. Walkinghorse, the manager of a flophouse in El Paso, Texas, is past his prime and getting close to hitting the spiritual bottom. He owes his tough German ex-wife alimony which she needs to finance her boyfriend?s stockcar racing career. His main activities are drinking, chasing drug addicts from the motel, and fixing the clogged toilets of the down-and-out clientele. Walkinghorse?s family consists of four other siblings, all adopted and of mixed race, some successful, some not. They all grew up honest in the poor section of town in a house that ?resembled a nervous breakdown?. While the family patriarch lies dying and the family gathers to stand vigil, Uriah gets himself caught up in the very serious problems of a Mexican drug smuggler who uses his bank in El Paso to launder money. What complicates the matter for Uriah is the widow, Jillian. Her husband, whose sexual tastes could shock even the most seasoned tabloid reader, was the respectable front man for the bank. With him dead and the ruse of fiduciary respectability coming apart, she falls for Walkinghorse who has his hands full trying to stay alive while being chased by criminals who have enough money to make a James Bond villain seem like a piker. Fortunately for Walkinghorse, their taste in extravagantly staged executions allows him to escape death and continue the chase. Catching the bad guys is almost a secondary concern for Walkinghorse: a man who should?ve died when abandoned as an infant, he grapples everyday to find and justify a game plan that would give his life a purpose. No noir-Knight in a fancy fedora, Walkinghorse finds that trying to solve the problems of others is a convenient way to forget his dilemmas, if only for a while. Walkinghorse takes one day at time in his own program of recovering from an existence of disappointments and dead end living, where ?hope is the equivalent of drinking your own bile.? What Walkinghorse realizes, after burying his father and admitting a brother to a detox program with the money from another, very successful brother is that acceptance, charity, and love?all the corny things that one wouldn?t expect in a blistering book like ?Sky Full of Sand? can actually mean something when shared with another human being. His ex-wife?s boyfriend is killed in a racing accident. She?s carrying his child and asks for Uriah?s forgiveness. Uriah can now understand what human emotions can mean, and is ready to integrate them into his life. |
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