Review
"Oscar Wilde once quipped that the truth is rarely pure and never simple. Amen to that, says Blood of Paradise, David Corbett's powerful and deeply unsettling novel of Americans attempting to navigate the perilous waters of post-civil-war El Salvador. . . . Though Corbett's novel is as fast-paced as a political thriller and as blood-drenched as a Quentin Tarantino opus at its twisted best (or worst), his aspirations extend far beyond a place on this summer's beach reading list. In a concluding coda labeled "Dossier," the author writes that he drew several themes of the book from Sophocles' "Philoctetes," in which the son of Achilles is corrupted by a cunning Odysseus. And Blood of Paradise is a novel with a political viewpoint. The Dossier is subtitled "From Troy to Baghdad [Via El Salvador]." To those Bush administration officials who have proposed that El Salvador's movement from armed struggle to elections can serve as a model for Iraq, Corbett's Central American tableau responds with "God help us." . . . The plot is complex, multilayered, at times vertiginous. . . . With all of that, the central character of this tale is the land in which it unfolds . . . Corbett writes knowingly and often lyrically of what El Salvador looks, sounds and feels like: its heat, its plants and animals, its foods, its beaches and lagunas. . . . There were times when character development defered to the hurtling plotline and political message. But that has also been true of John le Carre's more recent and ideologically loaded fiction, such as The Constant Gardener, or of Robert Stone's Damascus Gate. Yet I found those books riveting, and Blood of Paradise should feel at home in their company."
—Dennis Riordan, San Francisco Chronicle
"This is, above all, a serious novel. Serious, of course, is not always good. Serious can be deadly dull. But seriousness, when combined with moral concern and novelistic talent, can produce outstanding fiction. A number of writers . . . provided advance praise for the novel, and some compared it to works by Graham Greene and Robert Stone that have also explored Americans caught up in troubling events in distant lands. The comparisons are apt. I would say of Blood of Paradise what I said of Done for a Dime: If you accept its politics, if you don't find it too dark or disturbing, it's an example of the best in contemporary crime fiction—or, if I may be so bold, in contemporary fiction, period."
—Patrick Anderson, Washington Post
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Whatever Became of the Laugh Masters?
It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose.
-Joseph Conrad, An Outcast of the Islands
1
Cocooned in a hammock at Playa El Zonte, Jude launched the siesta hour with a lusty tug from his beer, swaying beneath the thatched roof of a glorieta. Above, the sun was blistering; even the skirring wind off the ocean felt parched and hot. Below, the beach of black volcanic sand with its scatterings of smooth dark stone curled out to the point. He wondered what it would take to know-not suspect or hope or pretend but know-that the woman he spotted, out there on the rocks, was or wasn't the love of his life.
He knew her: Eileen Browning, fellow American. They'd bumped into each other here and there the past month at Santa María Mizata, Playa El Sunzal, most recently on the pier at La Libertad, browsing the fishmonger stalls. There, with the briny tang of ice-tubbed shrimp, mackerel, and boca colorada brewing all around them in the rippling heat, he'd almost convinced himself that Dr. Browning, as she hated to be called, had been coming on to him.
At this particular moment she walked the beach alone, sandals in hand, wearing a polka-dot halter and cutoffs and a wide-brimmed hat, eyes toward the water as she watched a stray dog take a crap in the shallows.
Mark that in your tourist guide, Jude thought, memorizing the spot where the dog crouched and guessing at the current so as to avoid an unpleasant step later. Meanwhile Eileen turned back and resumed her lazy march toward the glorieta, holding her hat atop her head against the scorching wind.
From their previous encounters, Jude had learned she was a marine's daughter turned scholar, down here for postdoctoral work in cultural anthropology. She was cataloging folk crafts-pottery, weaving, embroidery-before they disappeared forever. He liked that about her, the devotion to vanishing things. He liked a lot of things about her, actually. She'd grown up around strong men-raised by wolves, she put it-and was pretty in a smart-girl way, lanky and leggy with strawberry blond hair and gold-rimmed glasses. There were those, he supposed, who might find fault with her large teeth and big boyish hands, her long skinny feet, but he was at that stage when these things seemed the true test of her loveliness-the endearing flaws that made her unique. Her perfection.
As she came closer it became clear she intended to stop and visit, and his heart kicked a little. He roused himself from his torpor, thinking: Comport yourself, soldier.
It was the heart of the dry season, the beginning of Lent. The surf camp was otherwise empty of foreigners, just the two of them. The restaurant and bar remained open, though, for day-trippers like Jude, drop-ins like Eileen.
Entering the thatch shade of the glorieta, she dropped her sandals, removed her hat, and shook out her hair. Her halter was knotted at the neck, revealing bikini tan lines striping over her shoulders to her back. Jude pictured the triangles of white skin around her nipples, then nudged the thought away, not wanting to be unchivalrous.
"We meet again." She perched herself on the nearest table, took out a kerchief and mopped her face and neck, then dusted sand off her shins. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you were following me."
Her voice was a raspy alto, one more thing to like. Jude said, "If I was following you, I'd be behind you."
She cocked an eyebrow. "Point taken." Nodding at his beer, she said, "Mind if I . . . ?"
"No. No." He handed it to her and she knocked back a swig. He tried to picture her on campus, earthy babe of the brainy set. The bohemian broad.
"I'm going to want one of these." She handed back his beer and glanced over her shoulder. "Have you eaten yet?"
Behind her, two indígena women worked the kitchen attached to the bar. It was a rustic business: wood roasting pit, propane grill, a sand floor with a hen and several chicks dithering underfoot-plus the briny dog from the shallows earlier, watching as her two pups tumbled together, chasing each other around. The fried corn fragrance of pupusas wafted toward them, mingling with the smoky aroma of a roasting chicken.
"Just." Jude patted his midriff.
"Oh well." She made a lonesome-me face. "I saw the truck when I drove up-it's yours, right?-but there was nobody around. When did you get here?"
"Dawn." The best surfing came at daybreak and late afternoon, when the doldrums smoothed the chop from the ocean, the waves glassy. He'd stayed out longer than usual this morning, though, enjoying the solitude. Gypsies would show up the next few weeks, jamming the lineups. Come the rains, the ocean swelled. So did the crowds. "I was out beyond the break."
"I got here sometime around ten, I think, and-Oh." She took her glasses off. "Excuse me." She started working a speck of sand from her eye, blinking. It took only a second, but in the moment after, sitting there with her glasses in her hand, her face transformed. Unwary eyes. A helpless smile.
Jude marveled at that sometimes-the way a woman changed when all she'd done was remove a scarf, an earring. Her glasses. Maybe it was his little fetish, but he doubted that. He suspected the French even had a word for it.
"Anyhoo," the glasses went back on, "I got here hungry, then just decided to take a long walk down the beach before lunch."
Looking for me, Jude suspected. Hoped. Pretended.
"Now I'm famished." Instead of heading off to order food, though, she picked up her hat and started fanning herself with it. Wisecracking eyes, a rag-doll smile. "I didn't figure you for the type, by the way." She nodded at his board. "Given the work you do."
Suddenly, the air between them felt charged. "Figure me for what type?"
"You know." She affected dope-eyed hipdom and a blasted voice. "Jude McDude."
"Oh. Right. Me all over."
She nudged him with her foot. "I'm teasing." A new smile, half-impish, half-contrite. "My dad surfs. Big-time. So I'll grant you there isn't a type. And if an old leatherneck like Pop can hang with the waterheads, I don't see why a bodyguard can't."
He cringed. Bodyguard. It called to mind steroids for breakfast and cream corn for brains, all stuffed in a bad suit. But he guessed that if he reminded her the term of art was "executive protection specialist"-EP for short-it would hardly redeem her opinion of what he did. Or of him.
His cell phone trilled inside his ruck.
"I'll let you grab that," she said, getting up.
"No, it's okay." He reached down, pulled the phone out, and read the number on the digital display. He didn't recognize it. And he'd just begun his furlough, ten days off after twenty on, his usual work schedule. He was on his own time and didn't want intrusions. Especially now. "I can let it go."
"It's okay. I'll just grab some lunch and a cold one." She shot him another mischievous smile. "Let you deal with the captains of industry."
It's a wrong number, he wanted to say, but she was already ambling off. Jude stared at her back, exposed by her halter and crisscrossed with its misfit tan lines, and doubted he'd ever hated his cell phone more-at which point the ringer chirped again, the same numerals reappeared. He picked up simply to cut short the bother: "¿Quién es?"
It took a second for the voice on the other end to emerge from the static. "Hello? Yeah. Hello, Jude? . . . My name's Bill. I was a friend of your dad's."
Ten years collapsed at the sound of the voice. And yet, in a way, Jude had been expecting this call. There were rumors.
The voice said: "Bill Malvasio. Not sure you remember me."
"Of course I remember."
"Kinda outta the blue, I realize."
"No. I mean, yeah, but it's not that. I was just . . ." His voice trailed away. The static of the phone connection swelled then ebbed, a sound like sandpaper against skin. "I was just talking to somebody else. The shift, from that to this. To you, I mean. I dunno. Just sudden."
Jude had spent a good part of his boyhood watching his dad and Bill Malvasio head off together-cop weddings, cop funerals, drinking parties, poker marathons, or just another shift in the Eighteenth District. To call them best friends missed the thing by half. Malvasio was like family, but not the kind the women wanted around-more like a black sheep uncle, the fun uncle, the one with the wily mean streak. Jude hated admitting it, but he'd competed most of his life against Wild Bill, vying for his father's respect. And despised not Malvasio but himself for that.
"Listen, Jude. I realize this is a little late but, about your dad's passing, I'm sorry. Ray was still young."
Jude wrestled with a number of things to say, none of them particularly astute. His dad had drowned on Rend Lake-accident or suicide, no one knew for sure. A bad end to a lot of bad business.
"Proud man, your father. None of us were what they made us out to be. Certainly not Ray. I've got some stories in that regard, if you'd like to hear them."
Jude sat up in the hammock finally. Planting his feet in the rocky sand, he checked the incoming number again. Sure enough, Malvasio was in-country. "Run that by me again."
"We could get together. I mean, if you're up for it."
"When do you mean?"
"Now, you want."
Jude felt stunned by the offer, but refusing was out of the question. Hear a few stories about my dad? Sure. Add a few more collectibles to the museum of bullshit. But it wasn't just that. There we...
Audiobook
