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Review by Laurie Parker
There's something about novels written by journalists. When a journalist turns to fiction, if he or she actually has the knack of creating original stories that seem as believable as today's front page, it can be magic.
"Raleigh (NC) News & Observer" columnist G.D. Gearino hit the literary scene a few years ago with his debut novel "What the Deaf-Mute Heard," which will soon be a Hallmark Hall of Fame production. Gearino's new book, "Counting Coup," is another triumph. In it he creates one of the most likable (if exasperating) characters to grace the pages of any novel this summer.
Tad Beckman is a small-town newspaperman who writes one of those columns designed to point out -- and hopefully right -- those wrongs committed against the common man. In time, all the carnage, cruelty and futility every journalist sees turn Tad into the stereotypical hard-bitten, cynical newsman. So when a desperate woman pleads with Tad to save her from her murderous ex-husband, he brushes her off as an annoying whiner.
Bad move. As the woman's youngest child later announces as he steps out of the trailer into the glare of the police lights, "Mommy's head came off." Indeed it had, with the help of the drunken lout from whom Tad's caller had begged him to save her.
What does Tad do? He writes a column about it. He is truly sorry for what happened, but that doesn't stop him from getting some good copy out of the event. His editor, Cooley, calls it "the worst sort of grandstanding self-flagellation," and it is. Even Tad knows it.
Then he wins a Pulitzer for it. Ashamed to be seen profiting from someone's gruesome death, he quits his job and journalism to spend a year hiding out in that place where no one need have a history, Key West.
Tad finally comes to realize that his self-imposed exile is "a loathsome form of self-pity." He packs his few belongings into his car, along with 12 envelopes stuffed with resumes (that include no mention of the Pulitzer) to be left at papers along his intended route back to Georgia.
The first stop is the Miami "Post-Star," whose editor hires Tad on the spot. It is here in the blistering steam bath of south Florida that the plot really heats up.
In Tad's words, "Miami is full of rogues, thieves, scoundrels, wastrels, plotters, and pretenders. And that's just a look at the business and civic leaders." A perfect place for our boy, no?
Until he meets a mysterious woman who exposes her breasts to him on the beach and eventually hands him the column of a lifetime. There's one hitch: Is the story true? Thereby hangs a tale that will keep the reader glued to his or her seat.
Part comedy, part drama, part coming-of-age story (though Tad gets around to it a little later than most), part Chandleresque "noir," part "Miami Vice," "Counting Coup" is a terrific yarn that should be added to everyone's summer reading list.
Laurie Parker works as marketing manager for Louisiana State University Press.
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