Sometimes I read crap. I read about 5 novels a month and I try to read a variety of things so its inevitable. But I rarely write about it on my blog because as a writer I understand that sometimes my opinion is simply my opinion. I've come to realize that a novel can be great even if the wonderful me does not enjoy it. But as I get back into academic mode I am embracing my inner critic and books like Lost River by David Fulmer make it far too easy to do so.
Currently I am researching New Orleans for a new writing project and I found this book at the library. This is where the crap comes in.
Lost River is book 4 in the Valentin St. Cyr detective series. It is 1913, Creole Detective Valentin, and I mention Creole because this fact becomes one of the biggest problems in the book ( I'll explain that soon), is trying to keep his nose out of trouble. Valentin was a renowned street detective in New Orleans, Storyville. Storyville was known for its Bordellos, both high and low, where women of all varieties (at one point there was a blue book that listed 2000 prostitutes), serviced the roving population of men. It thrived with wild Jazz music, gambling and crime. It has served as inspiration for many great novels. When we meet up with Valentin he has started a new life away from Storyville with his ex prostitute girlfriend, they use to call them sporting girl's, Justine. But though he is working for a law firm, helping the lawyers protect the secrets of their rich but despicable clients, and enjoying a calmer life with Justine, he still feels the tug of Storyville. Soon men, enjoying the services of the sporting girl's, are showing up dead and Valentin is the only one who can find out who is behind these strange murders. I'll leave the synopsis there because frankly the story is very predictable, by the 30th page or so you know the two people behind the murders you just have to figure out when Valentin will track them down.
Now I'll get to the crap part. It is an art to create characters and when writers choose to write about cultures and time periods they are not a part of or lived in, it can be a tricky enterprise. I myself am writing about the Creole culture and in my first book the main character has a Slovak friend, so I understand how delicate the research into this is. It is hard to understand the nuances of a culture if you are not immersed in it. Some do this brilliantly like the novel, Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden, but here you can sense both Fulmer's fascination with Creole culture and the New Orleans created by black Jazz geniuses, yet he has no real understanding of those people and that time and little flare when exploring the characters. I should have known there was a problem when in the second paragraph of the book he writes, "Then the pictures would come to life: a curve of brass glimmering off hot lights, the wild and hungry faces, then bodies of midnight black, fair brown, and light coffee writhing in eclectic animation." It was a slightly cheesy way to describe the various complexions of us black folks but I let it go. I actually became grateful for that cliched attempt at color description because very soon he just become completely lazy and began using racial signifiers instead. What do I mean by that? Well, without fail, whenever he writes about a person of color in the book he specifies their race, examples. "With the causal efficiency of veterans, the mulatto driver and his Negro helper climbed down..." (pp.32). Or, "The younger attendant wandered out of the room, and the mulatto perched atop the desk..." (pp. 29). "The Negro assured her that he had heard it correctly," (pp.53). Even a brief mention of the great jazz artist Louis Armstrong gets the Negro tag just in case we forgot folks. Then there's his references to the "Prettiest of the octoroons and quadroons..." Octoroons and Quadroons were the name given to Creoles according to how much African blood they had in them. But the Negros,' Mulatto's, and octoroons are not the only ones specified every single time they enter a scene but also the rare Italian's that dare to step on the scene. Shockingly enough Fulmer even racialized his main character every single time he is discussed in the novel. At times calling him the "Creole detective," or "Saracena, which was the name that was on the Creole's birth Certificate." This carries on until the very end, "Valentin St. Cyr. So, the Creole had visited..."(pp.63). I get it he's Creole!!
Clearly Fulmer wanted to place his book in an "exotic" world with "exotic" characters but does not see the characters as real life people within the text but rather racial props. I should note white characters such as Officer Weeks and McKinney, are never called white or "the Caucasian." Character Tom Anderson or as he likes to remind us on every page, "The King of Storyville" is white but its never mentioned that's why I know he's white. It becomes so glaringly repetitive at times that I was shocked the editors allowed this. I have white characters in my novels and I don't refer to them as "The caucasians."
Then there is is salacious need to call the prostitutes every cool tag line he can get. Some of the goodies are, "Harlots." "Sluts." "Whores." (This was all found in three paragraphs on page 30). Or this gritty sentence, "The deeper into the District, the faster and cheaper the action, until it reached rock bottom with the Robertson Street crib whores, those filthy drunken, degenerate sluts who would do anything for a price" (pp. 4). Then there is is priceless description of a toothless Negro whore who gets brutalized by some rich white youth when they tie her up naked to a lamp post and stick a fire cracker inside of her and actually light it. It is a horrific gag and she doesn't get hurt but after wards she is forced to still service them. Shakespeare anyone?
There is also Valentin's "Creole" girlfriend, Justine, who is always naked and willing, exposing her "brown curves," wrapping a Kimono around herself. And anytime he even looks at her he either literally has sex with her or marvels at how much he wants to have sex with her. This is love amongst the Creoles, I guess. It must be the African blood.
Then there is his almost humorous lines that are suppose to make us bite our nails in suspense. Like this one folks. "She bit her tongue. It wouldn't be long before her name was on lips from one end of the city to the other. They would all find out soon enough. Once she finished shedding her skin, no one would be able to deny her" (pp. 37). OOOHHHHH, you must be shaking in your boots. No? Okay, neither am I.
I realized that he probably has good intentions but he is unable to capture the voice and the rhythm of the multi-racial characters, so like a blind voyeur, he must constantly remind us, "READERS THIS IS A COOL CREOLE OR A UNEDUCATED BLACK SERVANT." Rather than create unique characters that speak for themselves and authentically represent the time they exist in and the unique expressions within their culture. What's shocking is that this guy has won awards for his detective novels. I have not read any others so maybe they're great. But I must say I try to always finish a book even if I despise it but this one was so predicable, tacky, and poorly written, he literally repeats information that he's just told you on the page before, that after page one hundred I started skipping twenty pages at a time just to get the gist of it.
If you care to to savor its awfulness please DON"T WASTE A PENNY ON IT. Go to the library like I did. Or do one better, take a long nap. And though I fear I wasted a day reading this piece of work, as the great writer Stephen King says, "bad books have more to teach than the good ones." Yeah, it gives writers hope that if this can get published so can they.
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