Worse Angels by Laird Barron

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on May 26, 2020

Isaiah Coleridge was a more interesting character during the previous two books in this series, when he was still a mob enforcer. As an enlightened thug, he had a unique personality. Now that he’s a private detective, he’s just another private detective, albeit one with a colorful background. He has gone straight to prove to himself and everyone else that he can follow a better path, which stops just short of being self-righteous. Fortunately, he hasn’t crossed that line. He wants to kick the dopamine rush that comes from hitting people, but he regularly encounters people that try to hit him, so what choice does he have? His thuggish instincts are still at war with his better nature, and every now and then his worse angel allows barely controlled mayhem to rule. He proves that late in the novel by assuring that some troublesome people will never make trouble again. That’s the Coleridge of old.

My ultimate issue with Worse Angels is not that Coleridge has gone soft — by the end of the novel, it is clear that he is still a wrecking ball — but that the plot veers in the direction of the supernatural. With the exception of John Connolly, I prefer my thriller writers to stay grounded in reality. Granted, there might be non-supernatural explanations for certain phenomenon, but they are about as plausible as gaining the ability to climb walls after being bitten by a radioactive spider.

Coleridge is improbably well read for a thug. In addition to summoning “the literary specters of Holmes and Mason; Poirot and Fletcher,” he quotes ancient Greeks and is familiar with history and mythology and philosophy. At least he has something to talk about. Unlike the thriller protagonists who describe their weapons in loving detail before running out of conversation, Coleridge ponders the mystery of existence, including the knowledge that all we have is “that fragile guttering flame between us and the endless void.” I probably like him because, despite his dark nature, he is good to dogs, only kills jerks, and detests the “righteous racism craze” that is “sweeping the nation.” For a hit man, he isn’t all bad.

Coleridge is hired by an ex-NYPD cop named Badja Adeyemi who worked as an assistant and bodyguard to Sen. Gerald Redlick, owner of a real estate business called the Redlick Group. The corporation laundered dirty Russian money. Adeyemi expects to be killed by Russian gangsters or arrested by the feds. Before that can happen, he hires Coleridge to look into the death of his nephew, Sean Pruitt, who was working on the Jeffers Large Particle Collider Project, an expensive and corrupt endeavor in which Redlick invested. Pruitt supposedly committed suicide by plunging down a shaft, but Adeyemi thinks there is a connection between that death and eight fatal accidents that occurred before construction came to a halt.

The first half of the novel drags a bit as Coleridge investigates the death with his associate Lionel Robard. The story take a strange turn when he encounters the Mares of Thrace, which seems to be a cult consisting of members who eat spoiled meat and dress like they are still in high school. The members become weirdly powerful when they make strange faces, perhaps owing to radiation, hence the Spiderman reference. None of that made much sense to me. The plot thread struck me as an unwelcome departure from the more reality-based stories Laird Barron told in the first two Coleridge books.

To be fair, I was feeling distracted when I read Worse Angels. I’m conscious of the fact that my mood affects my reading. Maybe Worse Angels is just as good as the earlier novels in the series and if I’d read it in a different week, I would have been more enthused. And to be fair, when the action picked up in the second half, I was drawn into the story. If nothing else, Barron’s sharp-edged prose is enough to keep me hooked on the series. I nevertheless hope the next book returns to the standard set by the first two.

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Blood Standard by Laird Barron

Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons on May 29, 2018

Some of my favorite crime novels focus on criminals, who tend to be more interesting and less self-righteous than cops or private detectives or lawyers. Isaiah Coleridge, a big guy of Maori descent, falls into the category of interesting criminal. He fancies himself as the broad shouldered bad guy in a Bond film who kills people on behalf of the archvillain (presumably he has Oddjob in mind). He’s been dispatched to Alaska, an outpost of the Chicago mob, to help Vitale Night intimidate some underperforming subordinates.

Coleridge makes trouble for himself by punching Night in the throat when Night’s crew begins to slaughter walruses for their ivory. Only his father’s intercession keeps Coleridge alive after the incident with Night. Coleridge has an iffy relationship with his father, who was involved in the death of Coleridge’s mother. That’s one of many features of Coleridge’s past that add complexity to his character.

No longer welcome in Alaska, Coleridge is exiled to New York because the New York mob, unlike the Chicago mob, doesn’t want to kill him. He ends up on a farm in the Hudson Valley owned by Virgil and Jade Walker, two scholars who lecture about the classics when they aren’t bailing hay. The other hired hand is an ex-soldier named Lionel Robard. The Walkers’ granddaughter, Reba, spends weekends on the farm while she “gets over some troubles” from the city. Most of the plot is driven by Coleridge’s attempt (sometimes assisted by Robard) to get to the bottom of Reba’s disappearance while looking over his shoulder to see if Night has landed in New York.

The meandering plot in Blood Standard might inspire a reader to create a flowchart to sort out the relationships between the characters. It draws on a lesson moviegoers learned from The Godfather: just when Coleridge thinks he’s out, the mob pulls him back in. Or at least it tries. But so do other criminal gangs, because criminals with Coleridge’s skills and size aren’t easy to find. Coleridge’s problems with the mob are compounded by problems with the local cops and the FBI and a group of mercenaries and some wealthy New York socialites, not to mention getting himself into the middle of an ethnic gang war. It’s hard to say which adversary is a greater menace. Fortunately, Coleridge has tough skin, a hard head, and a whole lot of fat protecting his vital organs.

Blood Standard mixes dark humor with crime drama. Coleridge is a fun character, if you think a man who is “the essence of violence” can be fun. As criminals go, Coleridge at least has the virtue of being incorruptible, which can’t be said of most of the novel’s law enforcement characters. He’s fond of quoting the classics, perhaps because epic heroes tend to be very violent dudes. He loves and protects dogs (and walruses), a virtue that (to my way of thinking) offsets a good bit of the harm he does to humans, most of whom deserve it. He stands up for his friends even if he knows he’ll pay a price. It’s hard not to like the guy.

The story has moments of action — violent action, to establish Coleridge’s credentials — but the story doesn’t depend on gratuitous violence for its pace. The violence comes at the right moments, punctuating a story that is more about the anticipation of violence than violence itself. The resolution of Reba’s disappearance is almost beside the point, but the plotline does get resolved. The resolution of Coleridge’s problem with Night is tense, surprising, and satisfying. If you enjoy rooting for the criminal in a crime novel, Blood Standard is a good choice.

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