When I first started this, I became concerned that I had already read it. The protagonist is a professional football player who got into a car accident that smashed his leg. When he healed, he was mostly fine, but had lost the explosiveness that made him the player that he was. A previous Charles Williams I had read, A Touch of Death, also starred an ex-football player who gets caught up in criminal shenanigans with a femme fatale. However, after some checking, I confirmed that this was indeed a different novel.
He quits football and is a bit lost and down on his luck. The accident was not his fault; a drunk driver sideswiped him and knocked him off the road. That driver had died in the accident and the insurance paid Halan 10k, but it wouldn’t cover his potential future salary loss as a pro player. Things change when he gets a call from an insurance investigator named Purvis. Something was fishy about the accident and he wants to pick Halan’s brains. Purvis is a neat side character, an old skinny weak looking guy with sharp eyes who it turns out knows some kind of martial art (as Halan learns when he tries to brace him). He also no longer works for the insurance company and is working a blackmail deal on the wife of the dead driver and wants to bring Halan in on it. I’ll stop here with the narrative in case you read it. You can well imagine that shit gets complicated.
Halan is smart and ruthless, almost without any feeling at all. It’s weird to read a book and sympathize with the character and slowly realize that he is the asshole jock who is only looking out for himself. You figure this out gradually, through the words of the widow, Julia Cannon, who is one of the better femme fatales I have encountered in a while. She too is quite ruthless, but also philosophical, almost tragic in her outlook.
A lot goes on in this book, but there is also a lot more dialogue and life philosophy than you usually get with Williams. It’s very dark and very fun.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment