Customer Reviews

Straight Cut (Contemporary American Fiction)

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

 

 

Is Hard Case Crime trying to expand its audience? Madison Smartt Bell isn't exactly famous for his crime noir fiction, but is probably best known for his novel, All Souls' Rising (the first of a trilogy of novels on the Haitian Revolution), which won the PEN/Faulkner Award and was a National Book Award finalist. Not exactly the rundown of the average Hard Case Crime author.

A thriller with literary aspirations (the cover quote from Walker Percy, author of The Moviegoer, clued me in to that), Straight Cut gives us the best of both worlds -- although for genre fans, the first two-thirds will essentially feel like exposition.

With an opening that will re-break the heart of anyone who's ever had to put a pet to sleep, Straight Cut tells the story of Tracy Bateman, freelance film editor, before, during, and after he is sent to Rome for a cutting job. Offered the job by his best friend / romantic rival and the film's director, Kevin Carter, Tracy is suspicious from the beginning, but the money is too good to refuse (another reason for his suspicion).

His Italian is poor, but he manages to make a go of it in Rome. He teaches an assistant, Mimmo, the ropes of film editing while dealing with the recent death of his dog, and his stormy relationship with his wife, Lauren (who married him for an American green card and occasionally runs off with Kevin), while spending a lot of time in trattorias drinking grappa. His reliance on the philosophies of Danish existentialist Søren Kierkegaard doesn't help things.

Neither does meeting up again with Lauren, which wasn't exactly on his agenda, but she shows up unexpectedly, carrying a mysterious briefcase, a false identity, and instructions from Kevin. Tracy is conflicted because he doesn't trust that Lauren will ever be the person he needs her to be (though their physical relationship has never been a problem), but he can see what she is getting herself involved in and doesn't want her to get hurt. That Kevin is so obviously careless about putting Lauren in danger only aggravates Tracy's love / hate relationship with him.

This leads to what most Hard Case Crime readers will have been waiting for the whole time: a continent-hopping drug-and-money exchange, with all the border-crossing problems, fistfights, and gun-crazy Bulgarians that implies. It only covers the final third of the book, but Bell's prose is so sparse as to make it feel like a novel unto itself. Tracy's thought processes are fascinating to watch and whether he will get himself out of this situation is always in doubt, making the suspense quotient even higher than expected.

On the whole, however, Straight Cut is a novel of character, not of plot. Go into it expecting a tense page-turner on the level of Bust or Grifter's Game, and you'll likely be disappointed -- but exercise a little patience, and you'll be greatly rewarded.

Yes, maybe I was expecting something different from Hard Case. I devoured the previous books in the series and enjoyed most of them. But this one stopped me dead in my tracks. It was well-written, no doubt about that. The author has a way with words. But as far as plot goes.. Cliche after cliche. *spoiler* (and as if by the first chapter, after we are told about his dog, we aren't supposed to EXPECT him to sacrifice someone at the end? come on..). *end of spoiler* It was a real chore to get through this book. When I want high literature, I want a layered plot with atypical characters and situations. This book, however, had a plot right out of a Europe-based crime movie complete with idiot foreign gangsters. I probably could have dealt with the cliche plot if the narrator didn't just go ON and ON about philosophy and about film theory (though the chicken thing was interesting, I'll admit) and film editing. Very tedious. Boring. If I wasn't collecting every Hard Case Crime book, I'd through this one right in the trash. I also think HCC was stretching it by releasing it under their name.. This was a mild crime novel that was mostly about friendship and love (not a thriller as the cover blurb says).
So yeah, if you enjoyed the other Hard Case Titles, just skip this and get any of the previous ones. You've been warned.

Straight cut is narrated by its main character, the highly introspective Tracy Bateman, a melancholy film editor who frequently quotes Kierkegaard. While in Rome, editing a TV documentary, he is reunited with the beautiful Lauren, his estranged wife. The overpowering feature of Straight Cut is its richly detailed first person narration which has the effect of making the reader privy to the nuances of Tracy's emotional state as he experiences this working "Roman holiday".

About midway through, Straight Cut turns, somewhat abruptly, into a story about the dark, nasty world of international drug smuggling. Tracy's deeply introspective narration continues through this part of the book, even as the novel's tone changes from slice of life to action adventure.

In writing Straight Cut, author Madison Smartt Bell has created an artfully crafted work of fiction which ignores convention while daring to combine genres. Interesting and original.

Tracy Bateman is having a really bad day. His farm is going to pot, his wife has left again, his dog is dying and although he won't admit it, he's on a fast track to alcoholism. And then his ex-best friend, Kevin calls and offers him a job. Tracy and Kevin have an intense love/hate relationship and it's mostly hate these days. Kevin is a charmer but he's also a liar, schemer and on occasion he smuggles drugs. Before you know it Tracy is right in the middle of a really bad situation and if he can't sober up long enough to fight his way out of it he and his wife could end up dead.

Madison Smartt Bell has written a thriling book. The background descriptions of New York and Rome are fantastic and there isn't one wasted or cliched character in the whole story. I think this is one of the best of the Hard Case series.

A dull novel about a film editor's trip to Rome and his encounter with some gangster, his ex-wife and his shady and bland yuppie friend.

Why did Hard Case Crime deem this book worthy of resurrection? It is a very tediuos novel from the 1980's which goes nowhere after the promising first two chapters. The main character bores us with talk of Danish philosphy and nothing much happens until the very end of the book.

Madison Smartt Bell is obviously a talented writer, but the novel lacks punch, as well as a point. I hope that there were not too many people who tried reading this book as their first foray into the Hard Case crime library, since this one is hardly representative of the usual fair they have been saving from obscurity.
HCC has done a wonderful job of bringing back the old fashioned crime paperbacks of the 50's, 60's and 70's, as well as intorducing original novels by various authors; packaging them with great covers to boot, but this one should have been left in the "Do not reprint" pile.

Some might think this is a weird story for HCC to publish. Yet, it seems to fit once you realize these are the same guys that republished "The Last Match." HCC has proven to be a diverse little company that turns out some unusual gems from time to time. However, this little nugget should have just been thrown out.

The book opens up in the middle of a guy's existential crisis and beats you over the head with it for the first chapter. The scenery and descriptions are unimaginative symbols for the emotional wreckage of his life. It also opens with a sense of ambiguity about the lead character's sex and sexuality. Which in the 1980's might have been fresh - when done correctly - but comes across as poor writing in this particular book. I got very little sense of whom the character was in anyway for the first bit of the book. This left me not really caring at all about the character later in the book. I had no reason to feel an attachment.

It also struck me as kind of ridiculous that this character that has been projected as very meek (if not down right weak) finds the ability to have a sudden burst of "Special Ops" level fighting skills. Where these fighting skills come from is never explored and mainly used for the sole purpose of producing an object to use for foreshadowing. Which makes it seem not only inauthentic to the character but the whole arch of the story.

This book was peppered with clichés, plot devices, and flights of fantasy. It became a chore to slog through the story. When the writer was not making the protagonist seem like a whiney drunk he was twisting the story to fit his predetermined course. The plot did not seem to flow logically and characters seemed produced like bridges. They cover the holes so that we can eventually get to the destination. A destination that was obvious nearly from the beginning of the book and most certainly from the time he takes the job.

I would advise people to skip this offering unless they are a hard-core fan of Hard Case Crime or just a collector looking to complete their collection.

Straight Cut features an unconventional protagonist - a Kierkegaard-quoting film editor - and various other unusual aspects for the crime genre. There's the hidden backstory (many areas of the past are never fully revealed) plus the way the lead character "accidentally" falls into a drug deal that becomes the story's main suspense element. Then you've got the writer of Cut, a literary author (Mr. Bell) not normally associated with crime fiction. All of this stuff is interesting, and is also pretty well covered in the other customer reviews. My bottom line on this novel is that there was never really enough suspense. This is NOT edge-of-your-seat story-telling. The lead guy, Tracy, more or less just seemed to wander out of one scene and into another. So I would not recommend it as a good read. One other thing, too ---- the cover art is a fun throwback to pulp fiction covers of the mid 20th century, but it is also a misrepresentation of Straight Cut's story. The scene depicted on the cover never happens in the story, and the teaser quote, "She was a pawn in their deadly game," really has very little to do with what happens in the book. I found that annoying.

At first blush STRAIGHT CUT is a bit of an enigma within the context of the Hard Case Crime list. Madison Smartt Bell doesn't ordinarily work within the suspense genre in general or hard-boiled crime fiction in particular, though certainly his talent is such that he is capable of writing, and writing well, in any genre he wishes. And STRAIGHT CUT is not as bare-knuckled as, say, BUST, FADE TO BLONDE or KISS HER GOODBYE, or any half-dozen titles from Hard Case you could name (with the exception, of course, of Stephen King's THE COLORADO KID). The publication of STRAIGHT CUT, however, demonstrates the elasticity of even the relatively narrow hard-boiled genre.

Originally published in 1986, the novel has a European feel and edge, and not just because a great deal of it is set in Italy and Belgium. Bell's writing style has a continental flare to it, as well as a cinematic one. At times I felt as if I was reading a script from a Barbet Schroeder film, not topically but stylistically. There is not a great deal of violence in the book, though it is there, interjected at one point to demonstrate that there is more to protagonist Tracy Bateman than meets the eye.

Bateman is a freelance film editor whose personal life is less than ideal. Kevin, a film producer who is Bateman's best friend and occasional employer, is incapable and unworthy of trust, as is Lauren, Bateman's ex-wife with whom he shared at best a marriage of convenience. Yet Bateman is at least partially to blame for this state of affairs, aware that his wife and erstwhile best friend formed points of a romantic triangle, a situation that Bateman tolerated almost from the beginning of his relationship with Lauren.

Bateman is sunk in an alcoholic ennui on his farm in Tennessee, uneasily brooding and reading Kierkegaard, when he receives a call from Kevin with an offer of employment. The job --- editing a documentary film in Italy --- is an interesting one and certainly within the range of his considerable talents. It is made clear though that the job will involve something more, an additional side task involving drugs and money that Bateman has performed before for Kevin. It is only when Bateman is in Italy and immersed in his editing chores that he learns that Kevin has interjected Lauren into the mix as well. Bateman and Lauren resume their relationship, however briefly, and as a result Bateman takes over Lauren's role in the side job, even as Bateman realizes that Kevin had assumed he would do just that. But Bateman is not without his own personal resources, which he utilizes even as he must fight against his own self-destructive impulses.

Though Kevin makes only relatively brief appearances at the beginning and end of STRAIGHT CUT, he is a Machiavellian presence throughout, crossing swords with Bateman at a distance while preserving an amoral detachment from what befalls others at his behest. It is Kevin's machinations, and Bateman's somewhat tardy but effective reactions, that provide the duplicitous elements that has made STRAIGHT CUT a cult classic among fans of noir crime fiction.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

Straight Cut, by Madison Smartt Bell was originally published in 1986 and, I'm sad to say, lets the side down. Republished in 2006, Straight Cut tells the story of Tracy Bateman, a freelance film editor and full-time jaded existentialist. The book starts promisingly enough - Tracy is on his crumbling family farm, actively not drinking while the buildings (and livestock) fall apart around him. In between glaring angrily at a half-full bottle and flipping through his copy of Kierkegaard, Tracy becomes aware that his dog is deathly ill. The decision to put his pet down is a rough one, and helps establish Tracy as jaded, worn and not-quite-as tough as he puts on.

Sadly, as the story kicks in, Tracy becomes less and less appealing. Hauled out of his hermitage to edit a film in Rome, he becomes reacquainted with his former partner (Kevin) and his former wife (Lauren). The three form a peculiar love-hate triangle, made all the more gruesome by the fact that they're deeply unlikeable people. Tracy, as the narrator, is most empathetic, but he varies between periods of self-aware (and self-indulgent) weakness and reluctant asskickery. Most of the time he hovers in between the two points, meandering about in a self-absorbed fashion.

The adventure itself is also bit stultifying. Tracy, Lauren and Kevin are all involved in a complex heroin-smuggling operation that only increases their overall unlikeability. Due to his reluctance and rough chivalry, Tracy still comes out the best of the three, but, no matter what, it is hard for the reader to share his victory in getting a briefcase filled with heroin into New York City.

Perhaps the real villain here is the 1980s. Long-lived, socio-empathetic writers like Ed McBain and John D. MacDonald both foundered during this decade. Capitalistic ennui and resurgent class struggles required a rethink of the traditional noir model. Bizarrely, the reluctant adulterer or the clumsy blackmailer became outmoded - replaced by the rapist, the drug smuggler and the serial killer. It took a new class of writer to bring sensitivity to the 1980's criminal, and I'm afraid that, in this book, Mr. Bell doesn't crack it.

I've read a lot of Hard Case Crime books. Some are vintage 1950s classics of the hard-boiled genre, while others are new published works from some of today's hottest authors. The classics are laced with subdued violence and implied sexuality, while some of the newer books are full of swearing, violence and sex. And, I've enjoyed all of them until now.

STRAIGHT CUT by Madison Smartt Bell is a Hard Case Crime book that I just can recommend. It really is a long, meandering mess, and even as I read the final pages, I really didn't quite know for sure what was going on. Tracy seems to be in some sort of love triangle with his wife Lauren and best friend Kevin. As a film editor, he goes to Italy for a job where he gets tangled up in some kind of drug deal.

The purpose of this review is simple. If you like Hard Case Crime books, then keep reading them. Just don't choose this one.