Customer Reviews

The Poison Sky (Jack Liffey Mystery)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

John Shannon is gutsy. He's decided to show all of us mystery readers that the genre can be expanded in multi-dimensional ways. Pushed out of its comfortable confines, and layered to include social history, economic and environmental awareness, and human drama. Less of a "Who Dunnit?" than a "Why Dunnit?" and a fun read. Sure, it's weird, noir, existential fun. But that's L.A.

In the third of what I hope is a long, long series, Jack Liffey is trying to find a missing kid. A cult scene, corporate corruption, and a disaster that has something to do with the book's title get in his way, as do sad, but true traffic jams caused by grand pianos and dead Guernsey bulls. Just another day in Paradise.

Shannon may swear "I am not making this up," wink, wink, nod, nod. And the cool thing is that most of the time, he isn't.

John Shannon puts the Los Angeles lowlife right out there to see at every turn of the freeway, on skid row, and in big dirty businesses. The world has long been suspicious of LA as the land of the true crazies. Shannon gives them to you, right in the face of his main character, Jack Liffey--himself not exactly on an upswing.LA is always on the brink of some natural disaster or manmade catastrophe. Shannon brings the latter to a head--or a cloud--by introducing nasty industrial poison to the already smoggy sky. Liffey, however, dives into the morass of seedy characters, religious freaks, cardboard box dwellers, and a few others trying to hang onto middles class values. He saves the day for all these people, allowing the city dwellers to eke out another day--and if we're lucky another disaster from John Shannon.The prose is swift, underbellied like its characters. I get the feeling of "Chinatown" and the Chandler novels. A good read all around and worth waiting for the next one.

If you're looking for a new mystery series to sink your teeth into, check out John Shannon's Jack Liffey books. Like the previous two, this one has all the ingredients that, in my view, make for a wonderful read in this genre. There is a multi-layered case that has Liffey, finder of kids who are lost in more ways than one, mired in yet another of the seamy communities that roil behind the glitzy facade of Los Angeles; memorable characters; and a well-crafted story that involves religious freaks, industrial poison and corporate corruption. How can you go wrong! I'm eagerly awaiting the next installment.

I can always count on John Shannon to yank me straight into his novels and keep me there, usually depriving me of sleep as I stay up through the night to finish what I've started. His recent release, Poison Sky was certainly a good case in point. From the first page, where Liffey's progress on 405 is impeded by a dead Gurnsey bull, I am transported into the common place oddities that are a part of the L.A. culture. Shannon peppers the novel with such absurdist scenes, and characters to match--such as the old man beside the highway carrying a sign saying: WILL WORSHIP FOR FOOD, or the other old man, whom Liffey teaches to give the bypassers the finger, rather than throw pebbles at them--foreshadowing the sense of the surreal achieved at the novel's climax at GreenWorld. The L.A. of Jack Liffey is definitely not the L.A. promoted by the Chamber of Commerce, although it has its root causes in the capitalist commercialism that is so promoted. I liked especially, in this novel, the character of Liffey's daughter, who, like all of Shannon's characters, is not just a stereotypical creation, but has an agenda of her own. So, too, is Faye Mardesich a memorable and unique woman who comes in clear as real life. There is much else to like about John Shannon's Poison Sky, and I recommend readers treat themselves to a great read to find out the rest.

For those unfamiliar with Mr. Shannon's work, "The Poison Sky" is most recent title in the author's "Jack Liffey L.A. Crime Series." The series as a whole represents one of the most audacious and innovative efforts in the history of hardboiled crime fiction. When the author finally lays to rest his decent, intrepid, but sometimes perplexed hero, he will have updated and revised not only a traditon that began with Hammet and Chandler but will also have managed to chronicle the unraveling of a postmodern Los Angeles that is only a standard deviation from "Bladerunner." A recent "Chicago Tribune" review asserted that Shannon is the frontrunner to assume the contemporary Chandler mantle. Any appreciative and sensitive reader will immediately notice that these books are probably the best written detective fiction on the market. But even more importantly, when and if the series is completed, it will constitute one of the most subtle and important ethnographic studies of Southern California at the beginning of the new millennium. Jack Liffey is a Vietnam era vet and failed technical writer whose long slide into alcoholism and penury has been blunted by his intense love and concern for his teenage daughter and a curious knack for finding missing children. In the process of tracking down sysfunctional kids who should probably remain lost, Liffey manages to expose some of the most appalling social contradictions that blight the California dreamscape. Having previously exposed the machinations of corrupt politicians,drug purveyors, and corporate ripoff artists as well as the inauthenticity of a dissolute Hollywood in the age of hyper-technology, in the "Poison Sky" Liffey confronts the bizarre unrealities of the L.A. cult scene. By the end of the novel one sees that the lines are easily erased between metaphysical enthusiasm, appalling brutality, and environmental degradation. The penultimate scene in the novel is the hero's mad dash in a requestioned BMW to escape death amidst a Bhopal type chemical disaster that has killed thousands of people including (possibly/hopefully?)all the TV execs in Burbank. Rumor has it that the next installment focuses on the "Orange Curtain" an hour south of L.A. and the condition of Vietnamese strangers in an even stranger land. Shame on Putnam-Berkeley if the rumor is true that they have decided to dump brave Jack and the prolific Shannon before the logical conclusion of the series. All Shannon fanatics should register their displeasue with myopic publishers who seem to be cavalierly suppressing some of the most refreshing adult crime fiction that has hit the trade lists in decades.

If you love LA and have spent the time necessary to really get to know it, you'll recognize Shannon's settings as inventive to the point of having a cruel fidelity with the reality of this city. Shannon has walked every street, observed every neighborhood, talked with the kinds of people that he places in this book. If you don't know LA, you'll see the city more clearly after reading Poison Sky. If you know LA, you'll never see it in the same way again. I respect the quality of Shannon's writing and his genuine technical ability with the English language. You get a lot more than a mystery story when you pick up this book.

Jack Liffey's life came apart in the California recession of the early 90's and he's been trying to put it back together ever since as a sort-of detective who finds lost children in the megalopolitan mindscape of southern California. The Poison Sky is the third in this series. Here, Liffey goes looking for a missing boy and encounters a deadly religious cult and corporate corruption of apocalyptic dimensions. One would think that there were enough fictional gumshoes in L.A. to fill Dodger Stadium, and how can one more matter. But the Shannon/Liffey shtick rises to a higher plane. While Liffey has a few rough edges, Shannon's prose is as polished as the monocle on an aristocrat's eye. Every time he meets up with one of the usual genre cliches, he turns it on its head and transforms it into an amusing insight. Liffey is a kind of anti-detective. He's knowledgeable about guns but uses them sparingly. He stores his only firearm in a hollowed-out edition of Roget's Thesaurus, taking it out on rare occasions. When it comes to revenge and getting even, Liffey resorts to inventive ploys and nonviolent tactics. Unlike the macho and masochistic 'tecs who seem to enjoy pain, Liffey knows that pain hurts and should be avoided. Meanwhile, Liffey's depiction of L.A. is unmatched since--yes, Raymond Chandler--and his closest literary soulmate is probably Nathanael West. This is a fine book. Discover Liffey.

A Michael Connelly endorsement led me to this one.

I simply either didn't get it or didn't like it...probably a combination of both.

I found it too dark, depressing, bleak, unfun and almost hopeless. I love the LA crime novels of Michael Connelly, Raymond Chandler and Robert Crais, but this was "too out there" for me.

Seeing all the five star reviews made me wonder if I was missing something. But, most of them are from California folks. So maybe it wasn't meant for me in the first place. Perhaps one needs to have the California experience to appreciate this. In any event this Florida reader didn't enjoy it.

I'm willing to move on from puzzle-type crime fiction, but I like at least some mystery, and there's none at all in this novel. The cult stuff in the first half is all pretty formulaic and not very relevant, even in 2000. And after Shannon exhausts his one-liners about cults and religion in general, he moves in the second half to a completely different problem, one to which there really is no solution, so he brings on the proverbial truck.

I enjoyed The Concrete River, but Shannon must have switched editors or something. Everyone, including Shannon himself, spends time connecting him with Raymond Chandler, but a more apt comparison is with Carl Hiaasen. The difference is that Hiassen's kooky Floridians have something to do with the plot, whereas Shannon's kooks don't have any plot to connect to.