The Genuine Article by A.B. Guthrie

 

She collapsed by the roadside and moaned. She could have been pretty, I thought, grade-school pretty, but now her clothes were dirty and torn, and her face swollen and red, like a man’s marked by booze.

A volume in the Sheriff Chick Charleston series by the Pulitzer Prize winning author of the classic Western The Way West, and the screenwriter who adapted Shane for the big screen.

The Chick Charleston series was a series of 5 contemporary crime novels in Big Sky country.

This volume is brief, full of on-point observations such as the one we opened with and the following examples:

The morning was as fair as ever nature could give. The sky was tall, to the end of sight and beyond. The horizons lay peaceful and distant, drowsing under the early sun. I thought of a statement I had read somewhere: values arise by contrast. So, sure, we needed cold and wind and rain for a full appreciation of days like this one.

Or…

It was hard to believe, on this quiet and tranquil morning, that murder could have been done, that violence could exist. Had the killer only counted to ten, so to speak, a day like today would have soothed him. The whole sky said peace.

Gorgeous writing up and down the line.

If there is a problem, and there was to this reader, it is the mystery itself, the reason for the novel’s existence. It is simply formula and, well, unnecessary.

To be candid, I feel that way about many “mystery/crime” novels.

I formerly was a big fan of the genre but now find much of it tedious wheel-spinning no matter how skilled the execution.

They all must wind up being the same.

The end is a foregone conclusion or we, the reader, are left unsatisfied with an unsolved mystery.

Whereas other genres, the Western in particular, to my eye, when skillfully executed may only be predictable in setting. Nothing more.

One opens the pages of a western not knowing if it is a de regueur shoot-em-up, a man vs. land tale, a fable told from the point of view of a dog, the exploits of a frontier newspaper publisher, a verité of a life among the Indians, or…examples and variations abound.

Whereas the murder “mystery” is no mystery at all.

One opens the cover, and one knows there will be a murder. There will be complications to keep the page count on point, and the book exists to solve the “mystery.”

All art that is found within must be shoved aside at some point to fulfill the genre’s dictates.

A shame here, as Guthrie’s skill is so high, I would have loved to see him use it on something less predictable as a “mystery” to be solved.

Again, if you are enamored of the crime-mystery genre, well, you might be in for a treat.

A well-written volume with a gorgeous setting.