The Keys of Tulsa [Hardcover]

Brian Fair Berkey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1989

This exuberant, boisterous first novel explodes with energy, humor and a touch of the bizarre. Publishers Weekly praised it as "a novel of great sympathy. . . . It's as if the cast of Taxi Driver were to invade the set of True Grit."

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Berkey's manic and wildly raunchy debut novel is not likely to be warmly received by the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce. He takes us on a seven-day out-of-control grand tour of this Western city's extensive seamy side. Berkey leaves skid marks on Oral Roberts University and racist country clubs, and rampages through the red-light district with quick pit stops in striptease parlors and drug dens. The company is less than wholesome: hookers, heroin addicts, a murderer or two, extortionists, millionaire prairie preachers and yahoos galore. It's as if the cast of Taxi Driver were to invade the set of True Grit ; a sort of redneck film noire. And it succeeds smashingly. Richter Boudreau, the novel's central character, is the ultimate scamp. He's a wisecracking Berkeley graduate in deep trouble with gangsters and the police. Not the least of his concerns is that he owes a lot of money to a temperamental drug dealer involved in blackmailing some of Tulsa's leading citizens. Richter's love life--by turns absurdly romantic and unbelievably sleazy--only complicates the mess. One of the most fiendish characters is Richter's very own mother, a glorious manipulator bent on straightening out her errant son. Mixed up in the story is Richter's partner in vice, journalist George Brinkman, who is investigating the death of a topless dancer, the novel's main mystery. Berkey's only bad habit is his continual mockery of the characters' cornball accents. It's the one note of condescension in a novel of great sympathy and enjoyment. The keys to Berkey's Tulsa unlock a raucous and exciting world.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (Trade Division); 1st ed edition (September 1, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671697013
• ISBN-13: 978-0671697013
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,843,205 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Rich in characters & development, tacked-on ending., March 7, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Keys to Tulsa (Paperback)

I think this book was comprimised by it's lackluster, irrelevant ending. The first 386 pages were wonderfully rich. The main character, Richter Boudreau, was brilliantly inept. Following him around the underside of Tulsa was a great blend slapstick and mystery. The cast of characters were also very colorful, most notably Ronnie, with his commando-like persona. However, there are too many details and ideas that go undeveloped. Some are just unnecessary. Why does Boudreau have two jobs? Why mention his ambition to write a sceenplay? The latter I suspect was meant to pesent a commentary on racial prejudice in the south, but it's sadly never developed. After all this effort is spent developing the characters, the last 9 pages of the book bring the story to an unsatisfying, abrubt halt. I read the last chapter at least 5 times trying to figure out how it fit with what came before. I thought it was a very unbalanced ending (The movie version has a more satisfying, albeit trite, rewritten ending). This book should have been better.

3.0 out of 5 stars An Uneven Debut - But Worth Reading, November 12, 2011

By 

stoic (Mobile AL) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Keys to Tulsa (Paperback)

Rating - 6.5/10

Summary - The Keys to Tulsa is a suspense novel that drags the reader through the gutter while making some pointed comments about "Reagan's America." I'm glad that I read it, but the novel is unfocused and - therefore - just misses the mark.

Review - In 1989 Brian Fair Berkey came out of nowhere and published The Keys to Tulsa. To date, he has not published another novel. This is a shame because The Keys shows that Berkey has enormous potential as a writer, despite the book's many flaws.

The novel centers on Richter Boudreau, the ne'er-do-well son of a once-prominent Tulsa family. Boudreau escaped Tulsa during the 1960s when he attended college at Berkeley, but finds himself stuck back home in the early-1980s. Life is pretty bleak, as Boudreau has money, drug, and relationship problems. In an unsuccessful effort to make ends meet, he teaches at Tulsa University, writes movie reviews for the local paper, and dreams of finishing a screenplay.

Though a failure by most standards, Boudreau thinks of himself as better than everyone else in Tulsa. Boudreau says:

"Tulsa was a sociopolitical jerkwater, an isolated pocket of oilmen, defense contractors, racists, Republicans, and religious fanatics - a place forgotten by time, like one of those tiny hamlets in the Appalachians where they still spoke Elizabethan English. Heterogeneous opinion was inappropriate; you spoke the common language or you kept your mouth shut. Living in such a place, he'd always felt, required a good sense of humor. The laughs were there if you kept your voice down" (page 65).

At the beginning of the novel, Boudreau falls back in with an old flame, Vicky Stover, a woman from a wealthy family who married a roughneck and lost her inheritance. Boudreau is in debt to Vickie's husband, Ronnie, due to a drug transaction; Ronnie offers Boudreau a chance to work off the debt by doing a favor. Predictably, the favor leads Boudreau to a very dark place.

It's difficult to generalize about The Keys. There's a lot to like and dislike about the book. On the one hand, Berkey's talent allows him to create vivid characters and give the reader a tour of Tulsa's underworld. On the other, the book is burdened by its seedy cast, which often makes it difficult to care about these lowlife. Consider Boudreau description of himself:

"Waiting at the elevator door, he checked his reflection in the little window. For a long bad moment he saw someone else looking back. The reflection had the small weak mouth of an incomplete predator, a suckling; a mouth of cirrhosis and arterial cholesterol and sour lungs; the mouth of a blind creature searching for a tit. It was, in fact, his father's mouth, and not his own" (page 50).

The Keys falls somewhere between serious and popular literature. I think that the novel works best simply as a "good story." There is a lot of action and there are many good subplots that come together at the end. However, Berkey wants to do something more in that he comments on religious fundamentalists, Reagan's stupidity, Tulsa's race relations, and a host of other ills. I don't think that the attempts to inject social commentary are particularly successful; they seem awkward to me.

This is the sort of book that reviewers often call "a promising first novel." It's good, but it could have been better. Who knows if we will ever see a second novel from Berkey? If hope so. In the meantime, The Keys is quite good, if imperfect.

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Author did too many drugs, February 27, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Keys to Tulsa (Paperback)

I knew Mr. Berkey many years ago. He did too many drugs. I have been waiting for his next book, but it hasn't come. I very much regret not buying as many copies as possible of the English edition for $2.99 when I had the chance. There is abundant hidden meaning in this tome. Don't be fooled by the book's apparent deficiencies.