“The Quick”
by Dan Vining
Quick:
noun.
1. Sensitive or raw exposed flesh, as under the fingernails.
2. The most personal and sensitive aspect of the emotions.
3. The living: the quick and the dead.
from Dictionary.com
He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
from The Apostles’ Creed
In the truest sense of the phrase, there is an urban myth about disenfranchised souls that are caught somewhere between life and death. They roam the concrete canyons of our major cities; searching for something that they can not identify. Some city-dwellers call them sailors; most of us out here in the boondocks call them teenagers.
Dan’s book is about a sailor (he calls them the Quick) named Jimmy Miles, who is a detective for hire. At a Hollywood MENSA party (Wow! A triple oxymoron!), a woman named Jean Kantke, claims that her father was convicted of murdering her mother a couple of decades ago, and she is just now getting around to finding out whether he was truly guilty. How did this woman ever get into MENSA?
Our hero, Jimmy, drifts through the story, spending a great deal of time and energy feeling absolutely nothing. No righteous anger, no brooding guilt, no affected apathy – nothing. Jimmy Miles is a poster-boy for genuine apathy. He feels nothing, and we in turn feel nothing for him. During the brief and sporadic moments when any other literary gumshoe would be reveling in passion or exercising his outrage, Jimmy’s involvement leaves the reader flatter than a beat-cop’s arches. This novel is remarkable in its ability to tell an entire story without a flicker of emotion.
Vining tries to build a counter-culture around the myth of the sailors, but the insights he offers into their world are sporadic and out of context. Whereas most writers will use this tool to develop suspense and interest in a certain environment, in this book each revelation is met with a resounding “Huh?” And the reader is left with a puzzle piece that seems to have gotten into the wrong box. Vining fails to build on previous flashes into the world of the Quick. Instead of slowly climbing a mountain of discovery, we are left picking up debris that has fallen to the ground.
The investigation is pretty lack-luster. It seems that Vining could not decide whether to tell an urban myth or a detective story, and ended up failing at both. I would love to describe exactly how pedantic his investigation is, but I don’t want to include any spoilers just in case there are still some masochists out there who still want to read this doorstop.
If the reader has enough hope and/or endurance, he/she will discover the truth about Mr. Kantke’s guilt or innocence, but no one cares; least of all, the reader. Instead, we are treated to ‘The Big Show’ in the world of the Quick. And again, nothing is resolved, but that is okay because, again, no one cares.
If I could sum up my opinion of this book in ten words or less, it would be something to the effect of, “What the hell was that all about?”
|
