scmrak's Full Review: Charlie Newton - Calumet City
I am Patti Black. That's Patricia A. Black, age 38, TAC officer in the Chicago Police Department; the woman some call the most decorated officer in the history of the CPD. That may be so, but sometimes my Sunday afternoon rugby matches feel more important than that shiny career. It's the "shiny" part that makes me nervous; nervous because it's only my seventeen years on the force that can shine. No one knows what my life was like in the years that are missing from my application to the academy; no one but me. And then we found the body in the wall: Annabelle Ganz, my foster mother, half of the couple who made my life a living hell. And Annabelle was the "gentle" one... it was Roland Ganz who so casually treated my body, my mind as if they were toys... Roland who fathered the child I gave away at fifteen... Roland whose tender ministrations left my body and mind covered with the kind of scars that would twist the soul of someone weaker... Roland who has re-appeared after twenty-three years to steal the son I gave up, the son I've never seen.
He's not going to get my John. He will die trying and I will be the one who kills him.
Patti Black's life is about to become Hell on earth, not that Patti hasn't already seen Hell. Hell was Calumet City, where Roland Ganz - mild-mannered accountant by day, demon incarnate by night - raped and battered the foster children in his care. Hell was twenty-three years ago, but for Patti Black it might as well have been last night. Hell is what made Patti Black the woman she is, a ghetto cop who knows no fear, a loner whose only dependents are a pair of goldfish, an alcoholic seventeen years sober. But then one Monday, it all starts to unravel for Patti Black. Within the next seven days, she will become a suspect in half a dozen murders, her name will be tied to corruption in the CPD, and "Idaho Joe" will put out a contract on her head. She'll spend a night in Arizona's Sonoran Desert and face a waterspout on Lake Michigan, find man and beast mutilated beyond recognition. And all that pales in the face of fear, fear for the son she hasn't seen since the day he was born; and the only people she can count on are a reporter aiming for a Pulitzer and her sergeant. Small comfort in the face of the coming disaster, but she'll take it.
Roland is coming for her, coming for John; and Patti Black Will! Not! Let! Him! Get! John! even if she dies keeping the Devil at bay...
Though first-time novelist Charlie Newton rode along with the real Officer Patti Black on the mean streets of Chicago's South Side while researching parts of Calumet City, he avows that "the true story of her life is both worse and better" than that of her fictional namesake. It's hard to believe that it could have been worse and she survived, for his heroine's backstory would be grounds for suicide for most. Patti Black, however, is a woman with uncommon grit, formed in the crucible of her stolen childhood.
Oddly, that's very nearly all we know about Patti Black: her history, her hobbies (goldfish and rugby), her determination. We know she's white and weighs 130 pounds, but is her weight proportionate to height? is she blond or brunette? blue, brown, green eyes? One line - the book's penultimate sentence, mind you - says she's pretty... Charlie Newton, it appears, is not big on descriptions. It's not that he can't write them:
"Demons and ranches and death by fire and I'm jolted awake. Plane. Small plane; hands white on the armrests; cheek cold near the window; blink; glance - the earth below is held together by giant screws? The screw is missing and the hole's on fire..."
... a description that could make you grin with recognition if you've ever flown low over the open-pit mines outside Butte, Montana, or Globe and Ajo, Arizona. But as for Patti Black herself? No idea what she looks like; whether it's a giant phosphorescent screw hole in the earth or her beauty-pageant winner friend Tracy Moens...
Character descriptions aside, Calumet Cityis a tough read. It's not tough because of the horrors Newton dreams up for his plot, it's tough because that plot is almost 400 pages of non-stop, end-to-end action; the literary equivalent of going "anaerobic" in the kick at the end of an endurance event; except that the whole "event" is like that! It almost requires of its reader a training regimen not unlike training for a marathon or an ironman triathlon: the action is that relentless. Know how every Stephen King horror novel has that climactic chapter where hero and villain are in that duel to the death? Reading Calumet City is like reading the climax chapters of thirty novels all strung end-to-end with almost no downtime to recuperate. Perhaps it has something to do with the alleged short attention span of the MTV generation.
This is a powerful novel, a debut novel that many a seasoned writer would envy. Its characters are well-drawn and realistic, Newton's depiction of the vast difference between Chicago's North and South sides is spot-on, and his plotting is impeccable. However, like a toddler who has only two speeds - flat-out and asleep - Newton's pacing needs work before he's truly ready for the big leagues. Once he masters that piece of the writer's toolkit, Charlie Newton will be the whole enchilada. I, for one, hope he makes it.
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