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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 5, No. 34 |
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talks with Irish-American author He's the Mystery/Suspense Writer Who's Helping Move the Genre Into the Realm of Serious Literature |
 MICHAEL COLLINS |
Collins is a phenomenon
on the mystery horizon
of TheColumnists.com
You could tell something unusual was going on when the young lady from the book store, looking a bit flushed in the face and obviously thrilled to death, stepped up to the podium to introduce local author Michael Collins.
"The other girls were all asking me, 'Are YOU going to get to introduce Michael Collins tonight?!!'" she said.
It was a perfectly understandable reaction. Collins is catnip to women. Pure, unadulterated catnip. He's GQ-cover boy handsome. He's smart, too, with a solid academic record and a doctor of philosophy degree. He's also from Ireland, so he talks with a slightly exotic accent, especially for his current hometown--Bellingham, Washington--where the closest you come to "exotic" is a Canadian who says "aboot" when he's trying to say "about." He carries a famously familiar name: Michael Collins was also the notorious Irish rebel leader of the 1920s, celebrated in films and fables. But this new Michael Collins is profanely funny and has lots of attitude. And, best of all, he does something incurably romantic for a living: He's a novelist, not a guy who works down at the docks, cleaning salmon.
And here's the really nice part: He's one hell of a novelist! I thought his last book, "The Resurrectionists," was one of the best books in any genre published in America in 2002. The new one, "Lost Souls" (Viking, $23.95), is even better. It's a mystery by genre category, I suppose, but don't make any mistake about it: This is fine literature by any definition.
So, why isn't Michael Collins a household name in America yet? Well, blame it on the nearsightedness of the American publishing industry. The deregulatory climate of the Reagan and Bush years has inspired takeovers and consolidation of publishing houses and a narrowing of the scope of the publishing market. The remaining big publishers all want commercial best-sellers or nothing. If a John Steinbeck came in today with "The Grapes of Wrath," they'd probably tell him, "Nice story, Johnny, but lose those depressing Okies. Let's make Tom Joad a romantic wayfarer and put him with a pretty girl from Vassar. Have 'em meet "cute" when has a flat tire somewhere near Salinas and he strides out of a lettuce field to fix it for her."
Collins can rant pretty well on that topic. He says he's been discouraged by publishers from putting social relevance into his novels. And they particularly don't like the idea of a guy from Ireland being too critical of life in America. And it's not just the publishers either. He's heard from a few critics who think his books are too "dark" and down on our way of life.
"One reviewer said, 'What's a foreigner doing criticizing America when our own writers can do it better?'" Collins complained.
Well, I'm not sure who that critic was thinking about? Maybe Stephen King or Danielle Steel, those well-known social critics? There's lots of criticism of American society by non-fiction writers, all right, but the fiction publishers don't seem to encourage a lot of it. They like comfortable categories of fiction, like "suspense," "romance," "action-adventure" and "mystery." That's why Collins finally decided to fit himself into a genre by adding a mystery or suspense element to his novels, even though he admits he doesn't care much about the mystery or suspense parts of his books.
Still, "Lost Souls" provides a startlingly good example of what a gifted writer can do within the broad definitions of a genre.
His protagonist is a small town cop named Lawrence whose private life is coming apart at the seams. His wife has left him for another man, taking their little boy with her. Lawrence lives alone in their former house, his only companion his dog, Max. He has a "sort-of" girlfriend named Lois, who seems to care more for him than he cares for her. He's so far behind in his child support payments that he has to borrow money from Lois to avoid defaulting completely. He drives around listening to a set of "wealth" tapes that tell him how to make his fortune in real estate.
Though he's an honest cop, he's come close to serious trouble in the past for losing his temper and threatening people. Like many American men of 35-40 today, he's adrift, not sure where the stream of life may take him now that his original life plan is all messed up and pretty much on the rocks.
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drew this praise from fellow mystery author Michael Connelly: "'Lost Souls' is a haunting, searing and elegiac treatise on the masks we wear.'" |
The crisis for Lawrence comes one Halloween night after a dull, uneventful shift making sure the town's trick-or-treaters aren't interferred with by anyone. On his way home, he discovers the dead body of a little girl in a pile of leaves by the curb of a residential street. Still wearing her angel costume, she has obviously been struck by a hit and run driver, who left her to die alongside the road. Her single mom has been sleeping off a drunk and goes into hysterics when she learns the child wandered out her open apartment door and into the street.
As tragic as that is, the real momentum of Collins' story begins when Lawrence learns a neighbor copied down the license number of the speeding car that probably struck the child--and it turns out to belong to the star quarterback on the local high school football team, who's about to play the biggest game of his life in the finals for the state championship.
It's the quintessential American tragedy: An innocent child with a deadbeat single mom is killed by a young man who has a life of fame and fortune ahead of him. Pro scouts already have tabbed the quarterback for big things. What's more, the publicity surrounding the clean-cut superstar athlete promises to lift this little community out of the economic doldrums and turn the nation's attention on what seems to be a wholesome American small town on the make for a real estate boom.
Before long, Lawrence finds himself in the grip of a terrible moral dilemma. The Mayor, the Police Chief and other town movers-and-shakers are pressing him to find an alternative solution to the "problem." Maybe the boy didn't know he hit the little girl, they suggest. Why ruin his life and destroy the town's own future by going after him? What good would it do? The girl's mother is already on the skids. Will it help anyone to fix blame on a promising young man?
If he goes with the flow, Lawrence learns, he'll be pushed to the head of the line of candidates to replace the chief, who's expected to retire soon. He'll be earning more and can crawl out of his own personal financial slump. He can begin again, like his wife did by marrying another man. His son will be proud of him.
And that's about when Lawrence discovers another car may have struck the girl first and that there may be a lot more to this cut and dried hit and run than he originally imagined. Enter the mystery.
What Collins has created in "Lost Souls" is not only a portrait of an American in the grip of a personal moral and ethical crisis, but also a portrait of an American community that seems to live by a sports bar credo that goes like this: The people who go out and get what they want are the "winners" and those who stop to worry about stuff like morality and ethics are pathetic "losers" who don't deserve a cut of the spoils. It tells us a lot about the ethical climate of America today--apparently too much for some publishers and reviewers.
As a thriller, "Lost Souls" keeps you baffled up until the final pages, finally revealing the answers to the mystery with developments that are deeply linked to the character of the people we meet through the book. It works well for its intended genre. The social criticism definitely doesn't slow the book's momentum. In fact, Collins tells his story in such a clean and efficient way that you can't put the darned book down.
His writing is concise and clear, yet filled with remarkably eloquent writing. One example I found comes when Lawrence decides to buy a new house and goes on a depressing tour of what's available in his low end price bracket. He describes one would be homeseller, an elderly Holocaust survivor, as resembling "what one of the Horsemen of the Apocalpyse might have looked like with his robe off..." Say no more. We get the picture.
As breathtakingly good as "Lost Souls" is, Collins says it's typical of his books, which publishers never seem to peg for the big selling weeks of November-December. They seem to think the pessimism and cynical views may make books like "Lost Souls" unlikely gift items.
"It's not going to be a Christmas book," says Collins.
The evening of his book-signing gig at Village Books in Bellingham, Collins told the crowd he was kind of pissed off about a lot of things. For all that, he was pretty amiable. For one thing, he was rankled by a local reviewer who trotted out the word "dark" to describe its contents.
"Dark!" he said. "Who's going to rush out and buy a book that's 'dark'?"
Collins believes that's why the publishing industry generally avoids fiction that's challenging these days--because it's "non-commercial." No doubt the urge to put out provocative fiction is way too moribund in American publishing. Collins says Edgar Allan Poe, writing for today's publishers, probably would look up at the raven over his door and say, "Hello, birdie!"
Yet Collins does keep getting his books published and getting more and more acclaim. Personally, I'm really happy with the "dark" side of his literary vision. This is what I look for in a novel. To be entertained in first class style while getting a fresh and often powerful view of my own culture and society. So what if it's written by a guy who was born in Ireland? All the better to offer a new vision. You leave a Collins book not only feeling satisfied, but also feeling inspired to help make things different in this place we call America.
As Anthony Bourdain wrote, "No crime writer alive is hunting bigger game--and doing it better than Michael Collins." I couldn't agree more.
Collins regaled his doting audience with his disdain for the various "sub-categories" of mystery, like "recipe mysteries" and "cat mysteries." Those authors clearly have landed on the opposite side of the mystery planet, along with the ones who write from the point of view of psycho killers who, says Collins, "really want to cut their own nuts off."
Instead, Collins is taking the mystery genre out for a good airing and whacking all the dust out of it. What he's hanging out on his line is new and exciting and, most importanly, intellectually stirring. If you try "Lost Souls," I believe you may find out why more and more of his readers of his books are panting for his next one.
He's a phenomenon destined to happen. He will be discovered by the masses. He will be remembered by the critics. Let's just hope the Collins boom isn't delayed so long that only his heirs will reap the benefits.
©2004 by Ron Miller.
The illustrations are courtesy of Viking Press.
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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