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DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 4, No. 1 |
 RON MILLER reviews the new book by Michael Collins
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Searching for the truths
locked up everywhere
of TheColumnists.com
In the world of books, there's nothing more satisfying than finding a clever and deeply-absorbing mystery that's also a first-rate work of serious literature. Such a book is Michael Collins' new novel "The Resurrectionists" (Scribners, $24).
To ride this book all the way to its emotionally perfect ending, you've got to be able to stick with a most imperfect sort of protagonist--Frank Cassidy, a man of the 1970s whose recent past is laced with mental illness and whose future seems certain to involve small rooms with bars on the windows.
But "The Resurrectionists" is a novel of redemption, so don't abandon the poor sod the first time he steals a car to take his family back to his old hometown nor that time he robs an old fellow and makes off with the guy's life savings. As Confucius might say, "Out of the mud grows the lotus."
When we first meet Frank, he's living a pathetic little life in New Jersey, married to a Southern girl named Honey, whose first husband is a serial killer waiting for his execution date on death row. With them is Robert Lee, her teenage son by the killer. He's a miserable little wretch who has no respect for Frank and usually begins any conversation with his stepdad with the words "Fuck you, Frank!" Frank and Honey also have their own little boy, Ernie, who's named after a muppet from "Sesame Street" and spends most of his waking hours playing with his toy dinosaurs.
If you ask Frank what his problem is, he has a wide variety to choose from, but ask Honey and she'll tell you her husband has a condition called TAS or "terminal asshole syndrome." Yes, dear readers, we're not talking about the Brady Bunch here. If you thought your family was dysfunctional, read this book and be uplifted.
The journey of Frank and his family begins when he learns his Uncle Ward has died on the farm in Copper County, Michigan, where Frank grew up. Ward was mean as hell to Frank, but he figures he ought to share in Ward's estate since it once belonged to Frank's mom and dad, who died in a house fire there when Frank was just a little boy.
One complication is the fact that Ward's own son, Norman, expects to inherit--or, more correctly, Norm's wife, Martha expects them to inherit the family farm. Norm, who is a hulking giant of a man, doesn't think about much of anything except turning automobiles upside down as proof of his physical strength or, better yet, giving up dairy farming to go tryout with the Miami Dolphins.
Did I forget to say that Ward's death wasn't accidental? Yes, it's true: Ward Cassidy was murdered by a single gunshot to the head and the authorities are holding a mysterious character named Chester Green, who may be the killer. Trouble is the suspect has slipped into a coma. Worse yet, the Chester Green who comes up on the identity files for the comatose suspect is a man who's been dead and buried in Copper County for more than 20 years.
Mystery enough for you? There's a lot more. Frank has been haunted by nightmares for years and they all seem to go back to that fire that killed his parents. He knows he was there that night and saw what really happened, but any number of shrinks have tried to pry the truth out of him without success. It's locked up, just like the secrets in the head of that man in a coma.
"The Resurrectionists" is mostly about Frank's decision to move his family back to rural Michigan to fight for his share of the family estate. That goal soon withers away, though, and he soon finds himself desperately trying to not only reconstruct his own past, but to rehabilitate himself so he'll someday have a genuine future.
The Irish-born Collins has a real affinity for American lowlifes and what makes them tick. He also may be the best distiller of American pop culture since Stephen King first started to document the highways and byways of American culture with his keen observations of high school life in "Carrie" back in the 1970s.
Ultimately, Frank gets a job working as a security guard for the local junior college, where he's "supervised" by an alcoholic halfwit Vietnam vet called Baxter, who sees Frank as his natural ally in a plan to fleece the school district out of thousands in phony overtime and kickbacks from insurance companies for filing false damage claims to school equipment.
Collins may be telling us the sad, poignant and often funny story of a loser who's seriously trying to redeem his soul, but he's also telling us, along the way, lots of things about the American culture that helps produce so many losers like Frank and nearly everybody he knows.
As for the mystery that's
at the heart of "The Resurrectionists," it's a pip.
You'll never guess what Frank's trying to remember about his
past, so it'll hit you like a pile driver in the final pages.
And I'm betting you'll be racing your way to those final pages,
if you ever open the first page of this impressive novel.
© 2002 by Ron Miller.
The Ron Miller caricature is © 2001 by Jim Hummel. The book
cover reproduction is © 2002 by Simon & Schuster. The
photo of the author is by Christophe Bourguedieu.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
teaches classes in mystery and related topics at Whatcom Community
College and Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington.
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