Daniel Woodrell has yet to achieve the recognition so many critics and fellow authors feel he deserves. No doubt the Oscar nominations bestowed upon WINTER’S BONE, the movie adaptation of his 2009 novel, will help. Along with that comes THE BAYOU TRILOGY, a welcome reissuing of his three early novels — UNDER THE BRIGHT LIGHTS, MUSCLE FOR THE WING, and THE ONES YOU DO — in an attractive omnibus from the new Mulholland Books.
It might come as a surprise to Woodrell newbies that his earliest works were essentially crime fiction. Indeed, it wasn’t until after GIVE US A KISS in 1996, subtitled “A Country Noir,” that he rebelled against being categorized as a genre writer. Yet crime remains an element in his works to this day, often shadowing the action and thoughts of his Southern or Ozark-based characters.
From 1986, UNDER THE BRIGHT LIGHTS introduces us to Rene Shade, a police detective in the fictional Louisiana town of St. Bruno. A prominent local city councilman has been murdered in his home; because he was also black, racial prejudice is immediately suspected as the motive. When Rene manages to pull himself away from his older brother’s saloon long enough to investigate, he uncovers a real estate scheme that depended upon the murdered councilman’s influence.
Rene Shade returns in 1988′s MUSCLE FOR THE WING. A clandestine poker game, with such high-rolling participants as the mayor of St. Bruno, is violently broken up by a group of strangers who kill the off-duty cop hired as protection and steal the cash pot. The robbers, we learn, are former cellmates who formed a gang they call The Wing. Rene is called in to locate and stop the robbers, while at the same time keep the source of the stolen cash a secret.
Finally, 1992′s THE ONES YOU DO is mostly about Rene’s father, John X. Shade, the legendary pool shark and womanizer recalled fleetingly in the previous two novels, who abandoned Rene and his two brothers in their youth. John X.’s latest wife, a singer in a local Alabama bar, decides her artistic future is in France. Before leaving John X. and their 10-year-old daughter, she steals a huge wad of cash from a local criminal. The moment he discovers this, John X. and the daughter head south to St. Bruno to reacquaint himself with his grown sons and lay low for awhile. But, of course, the criminal is soon on his trail.
Woodrell’s characters and their riverside locale are drawn to crime and corruption as easily as flies are drawn to sugar. Naturally, Rene is a police officer with his own ambiguous sense of law and order. But Woodrell is less concerned with solving crime than understanding his characters’ behavior and background. So while the first of these three novels follows a somewhat traditional murder-mystery structure, you sense the author shrugging off such restraints by the middle of the second book. By the time of THE ONES YOU DO, Woodrell has abandoned all but the most skeletal plot obligations to follow the fate of John X.
Even before this,you discover that the real treasures of reading Woodrell are not puzzles or procedures. It’s the atmosphere and ambience that drench every sentence and scene he presents. In spite of their poverty or redneck affectations, his characters are as empathetic and recognizable as any from urban settings, and his descriptions of the St. Bruno neighborhoods and landmarks will have you fanning yourself from the humidity, no matter where you happen to be.
Critics and reviewers have compared Woodrell to such Southern literary figures as Cormac McCarthy, Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty and even William Faulkner. Crime fiction readers might find him more akin to the moody works of James Sallis, George Pelecanos and Ken Bruen. Regardless of any such comparisons, THE BAYOU TRILOGY is a “must read” addition or introduction for readers to the works of one of the finest writers working today. —Alan Cranis
Related posts:
- The Quest for the Trilogy
- Punisher: Frank Castle — Six Hours to Kill / Frank Castle — Welcome to the Bayou / Dark Reign
