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Review by James William Brown
American kitsch is probably more interesting outside the U.S. than inside, where we often seem to be drowning in it. But in Athens, London, Singapore and elsewhere, there are avid collectors of the cover art of Mickey Spillane novels, hand-painted flamingo ties, Burma-Shave signs and other artifacts of American pop culture.
It's an entertaining and harmless hobby. But probably few carry it as far as British author Martin Amis who, in "Night Train," has attempted to collect the genre of the hard-boiled detective novel and make it his own as if he were, well, American. This is a departure for Amis, author of the acclaimed literary works "Time's Arrow," "London Fields" and "The Information."
The results are mixed but always entertaining. All the familiar ingredients are here: the big-city police force of jaded cops, the beautiful victim with three bullets in her, interrogation of the main suspect in a dimly lit room, a few red herrings. But in a '90s touch (or perhaps a tip of the hat to the popular PBS TV series "Prime Suspect") the narrator-detective is a tough-talking woman.
"My features I inherited from my father. They are rural rather than urban -- flat, undecided. The hair is dyed blonde. . . . I was raised by the State and I don't know where my parents are. I'm five-ten and I go 180."
Because she's named Mike Hoolihan and tells her story in the style of the traditional male detective in the work of Raymond Chandler or James M. Cain, it's often easy to forget that she is not he. But this does not slow the plot which plunges forward with the speed of the train in its title. The death in this case is also likened to a train by Detective Hoolihan.
"You buy your ticket and you climb on board. That ticket costs everything you have. But it's just one-way. This train takes you into the night and leaves you there."
Writing from inside a culture other than your own is not an easy task. Both sides of the Atlantic are littered with writers who've tried to draw characters from the opposite shore and ended up with caricatures. But author Amis is as successful in creating Americans as he is in bringing an American setting and tone to life. There are a couple of slips, but these do not deter at all from the main success of "Night Train" -- its terrific pacing. It's a fast, absorbing story, a dark train trip through the underside of big-city police work.
James William Brown is a writer in Massachusetts.
©1998, ProMotion, inc.
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