As the third novel from the man behind the online noir site Plots with Guns, Anthony Neil Smith’s YELLOW MEDICINE delivers in a big way. Deputy Billy Lafitte, a displaced officer from Mississippi, has made a new life for himself in Minnesota. The problem is, Billy is not what you would call a shining star on any police force. Bending the rules to the point of shattering them would be an understatement to how Billy operates.
We find out the circumstances that got him tossed out of his former department, post-Hurricane Katrina, and some of them come back to bite him on his ass. Only now, he’s pulling a whole new set of above-the-law activities, including taking protection money from meth labs.
Billy is under the belief that what he is doing is best for the situation; since he knows where all the labs are, he thinks nothing will get out of hand. He is called upon by Drew, a bassist for a psychobilly band that he has a serious crush on, for his help in a pretty simple job that turns into a nightmare.
Her boyfriend has a few problems with the local drug runners, in that another force is trying to move into the area, even branding him with a weird symbol. But what matters most is who’s really behind the new force: a terrorist cell. With Billy being the type of play-by-his-own-rules cop, he makes it his mission to break the cell himself, which become a huge mistake, to where he becomes the prime suspect when bodies start turning up.
Smith peppers the book with a keen ear for dialogue and knows that this is supposed to be real life and not some big-budget movie. He makes it clear in certain passages that Billy relates how the action would happen that way, while in reality, it happens a lot faster and with devastating results. The novel builds as such that you think everything will come off for the good guys, but Smith doesn’t play favorites, giving readers gut punch after gut punch so things never get too predictable, showing that – as in real life – there are prices to pay for actions taken.
YELLOW MEDICINE doesn’t end with everything tied up in a pretty bow – more like a piece of shredded paper that leaves the reader to come up with his own answers. Smith is a talent to watch, since he figures we’re smart enough to figure out things for ourselves, and it’s not his job to spoon-feed us. He’s has made a new fan out this reviewer, who hopes for more of his twisted words of noir. –Bruce Grossman
