A Risky Book Club Night

Hello,
On this snowy night I attended the monthly Hard Boiled Book Club meeting. Shockingly there were 5 of us there to discuss Risk written by Colin Harrison. I really thought considering the weather and holidays that it would just be me and Zach Sampinos. It was good to see that I was wrong.

Risk is a very New York story. An insurance lawyer's everyday life is interrupted when he is called to the house of his firm's founder's widow. Awaiting her own death, she has recently suffered the loss of her son in a hit-and-run accident outside a bar on the streets of New York. She wants to know what happened and, playing on her deceased husband's respect for the lawyer, entices him into trying to find out what happened.

Originally serialized in New York Magazine, Harrison writes a well thought out whodunit. Admittedly it took awhile to suck me in. The writing style is not hardcore or pulpy. It's much more literary using vocabulary such as fungible, and playing with colloquialisms. I said it was a New York story. Harrison clearly writes to that reading audience by including all kinds of details about New York life. Everyone is obsessed with the Yankees, live in apartments, and take taxi-cabs. Some would consider this kind of regionalism off-putting but I enjoyed it. Being able to recognize even specific geography makes the main character more relatable. He is one of us.

Harrison strives to make clear the mediocrity of his main character. He is not a top PI, or cop/detective. Young sees himself that way. However he has enough of a specific skill set to plausibly solve this mystery. I also enjoyed the relationship that he has with his wife. He often refers to her as being smarter than him and the lack of drama between them is refreshing. It was very "Nick and Norah" the way they played off each other. I would have enjoyed more of that.

Harrison does get lost in his red herrings. I wish more would have been made of the Czech girlfriend or a Russian mob connection. Here I think some of the original serialization starts to show through. Characters drop in and drop out in the course of a chapter. A lot exposition dump occurs in the course of 12 chapters. I was hoping for a bit more complexity. This reminded me of something I would see on television which speaks to the nature of the way that it's written.

Our group was pretty split on the Dickenesque ending. Don't worry, I won't reveal it here. Personally I enjoyed it because of the way that the main character reacts. His actions are always grounded in doing his job, rather than some moral/ethical dilemma. He is not a tortured cynical man. Even as he acquires great fortune he refuses to let himself be changed by it. His wife, Yankees, and $14 wine is all he needs.

I had a good time tonight. Fun was had by all. Happy New Years, Book Slave.