THE DEVIL’S REDHEAD

Debut crime novelist Corbett gets lost in meticulous descriptions of late-night bars and lonely rooms at the expense of character development and plot momentum.

Vegas dealer Shel Beaudry first hooks up with slick Dan Abatangelo in 1980. Dan’s free spending and ability to quote Baudelaire impress her, and she even falls a little in love when he shows her some of his photographs (“He could capture the riddle in an empty street”). Dan makes his money smuggling marijuana, and so Shel winds up with a job in his organization as well as a place in his bed. The relationship has a two-year run before the DEA busts up Dan’s smuggling ring and puts him away for ten years. Shel gets a light sentence and, fresh out of prison, meets sweet petty criminal Frank Maas. They’re comfy in a domestic routine when Frank’s young son Jesse is murdered. The distraught dad loses his grip and the relationship deteriorates, though Shel tries to hang on, feeling she’s too old now to change. But Dan gets out of prison with a single goal: to get back the one good thing in his former life, if she’ll have him. Frank has other ideas, namely a double-cross of some Mexican drug-dealers that will lead to a big score and the high life for himself and Shel. This ill-conceived plan implodes, as Frank seems to know it must; he and Shel are forced on the lam, though not together. In hot pursuit are some brutal hit men from the Mexican cartel and Dan, a few steps behind, piecing the story together as he goes. He enlists the help of hard-drinking radical reporter Bert Waxman, whose street smarts and knowledge of the drug underworld provide an invaluable compass.

A frustrating thriller whose action is always a little off the mark. Corbett’s brittle, intelligent writing and bittersweet veneer should have been put to better use.