THE KEYS TO TULSA

by Brian Fair Berkey ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 23, 1989

Seven days in the booze-and-drugs-assisted disintegration of a ne'er-do-well: a rake's progress, set against a backdrop of racism and reaction, blackmail and murder in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It's the summer of 1981; staunchly Republican Tulsa is now in the mainstream, and disaffected Berkeley graduate Richter Boudreau is in bad shape. He's about to lose his jobs as university lecturer (a complaint from the latest female student he's fooled around with, then discarded) and movie critic for the local newsapaper (too many missed deadlines). His wife is long gone, and though still, at 33, a good-looking guy, he can't seem to score anymore. He owes money all over, most pressingly to a sinister low-level drug dealer, Ronnie Stover. There's always the Big Plan (taking time off to write his screenplay about Tulsa's notorious 1921 race riot), but this collapses when his mother announces she's selling his rented farmhouse; she's moving to Dallas to join her just-married fourth husband, which makes Richter"" the last rotten branch on a dead family tree"": alcoholic father dead, younger sister dead, grandfather Truman dead and disgraced (a well-known local politician, he had been imprisoned for graft). Consumed by self-hatred, what is Richter to do but get high and stay high? This involves contact with drug-dealer Ronnie, who has turned to blackmail since coming into possession of some film purportedly showing the murder of a young black hooker by the son of Harmon Shaw, prominent preacher/ businessman and racist kook. The novel ends with no resolution, but a great blaze of violence: five deaths, and one resurrection. This is Robert Stone country; A Hall of Mirrors comes especially to mind. Though first-novelist Berkey paints with too broad a brush, and has not found a way of meshing the wasted Richter's angst with a convincing storyline, his writing has enough power and range (the wild, painful comedy of Richter's encounters with his country-club mother; the skin-crawling nastiness of his sex with a teen-age junkie) to indicate a bright future ahead.

Pub Date: June 23, 1989

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly--dist. by Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1989

Categories: FICTION