RARA-AVIS: More on Jerome Charyn

Peter Walker (pw@pw.cablenet.co.uk)
Sat, 27 Jun 1998 11:31:46 +0000 Jerome Charyn's "Blue Eyes" must stand as one of the great books of
the genre. I was given it by a friend and I knew nothing about him or his
writing. The opening few pages stunned me. Blue Eyes, Manfred Coen,
is tooled up and tearing out of the Precinct
to whack Chino Reyes. He has unfinished business with Reyes, a
Chinaman he had to slap down. Chino's pride has been ruffled and he's
taken to wearing a red wig as a disguise and hanging out in Brummy's
Grill. The Bulls tooling up, stuffing shotguns into carrier bags,
donning fibreglass vests, piling into the car, the comments of the
blond portorriquena who likes Coen's sensitive ways but not those of
the other rough bulls - those first few pages have a narrative force
which pulls you in, puts you right there in the midst's of the action.
You're almost sat in the car as the dialogue starts and the doubts set
in: just why are we out to whack Reyes?

If you come across it, read it, it cannot fail to impress.

Anyway, it may be of interest to you all that Charyn, already an
established writer, decided to write a crime novel after reading Ross
Macdonald's "The Galton Case". He was, he says, immediately struck by
what he called McDonald's "particular craft", his ability to build structures
into a "wild masonry" with "sad strange histories that crept between
the tight closed spaces". Charyn felt that Macdonald "were in the
habit of undressing bodies to find the skeleton underneath". He was
also impressed by the complete lack of sentimentality in the Archer
books.

Which is funny in a wat because there is a kind of "sentimentality"
in the books which is borne out by the fact that they are very
persoanl books for Charyn - but more on this later......

---------------------------
Peter Walker
Formerly 'pete@u-net.windy.com' and
'peter@thewillows.demon.co.uk
Sometimes 'mattscudder@yahoo.com
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