‘A Dangerous Man’ bites as hard as it barks

Editor’s Choice

A book review by James McEchron

“This is how you lose your life. You’re a kid, you play baseball. You are better at baseball than a human being has a right to be at anything. You’re going to the pros, everybody knows it. But before it can become a reality, you hurt yourself, bad.

Things happen.

You wallow in your own misery and start hanging with the crowd of kids you would have nothing to do with before you shattered your leg. You do some drugs, break into some houses, get caught.

Things happen.

You trade baseball and petty crime for hot rods. You’re a big show-off. You crash your Mustang and your best friend is in the car and he sails through the windshield and you get to see what it looks like when a teenager’s head explodes against a tree.

Things happen.

You meet a girl and move to New York City to be with her. She dumps you.

Things happen.

You learn to drink. You tend bar, you develop a drinking problem that’s like the rest of your life: nothing special. Years pass. Blah, blah, blah. Boo, hoo, hoo.

Nothing happens.

Then everything happens at once.”

That’s where the story of Henry Thompson, the main character of “Caught Stealing,” “Six Bad Things,” and now “A Dangerous Man,” begins. It’s a trilogy unlike any other, a bit of crime pulp fiction that reads as well as it shocks.

“Caught Stealing,” the first of the three, is filled with clever twists and provocative writing. Through no fault of his own, Henry Thompson inherits a key that accesses a storage locker with a large sum of money inside. Various parties want the money, and come looking for Thompson. They threaten him. They kill someone he loves. Thompson, with nothing to lose and a lot of revenge to dish out, ends up killing about a dozen people to get the money for himself.

Charlie Huston, the author of the trilogy, has written a contemporary pulp classic. Damsels in distress, mobsters, crooked cops, revenge and plotting and killing, with fantastical descriptions of violence that would unsettle the strongest stomach. Huston’s way with words is downright brutal; he’ll have you closing one eye before finishing a paragraph.

And that’s what a great crime story requires: fun writing. The Henry Thompson trilogy has it in spades. Huston paints an amazing image with words, and some sections of the trilogy will have you on the edge of your seat, literally reading faster than you can probably process the information. You forget you’re reading and feel like you’re watching a movie in your head.

The main character goes through a lot of changes and grows out of being an alcoholic with no prospects, but despite the growth he is becoming a more and more horrible human being. It’s like you’re watching an ugly flower grow, never gaining any of the beauty of a rose. But that isn’t to say the story isn’t beautiful; it’s just not beautiful in a traditional sense.

Thompson’s motivation, throughout all three novels, is protecting his parents. His enemies know how much he loves them and tend to threaten them, and that is where the heart of the story is. At the end of the day, the ruthless Henry Thompson is killing and fighting his way to the top to keep his mother and father, who never did anything wrong, from being hurt.

“Six Bad Things” and “A Dangerous Man” are on par with the first book, never breaking the suspension of disbelief. Some of the concepts and plot twists are pretty close to ridiculous, but Huston handles his characters with such finesse you’ll probably not notice.

Although never poetically profound, the novels are filled with revelations that will have you gasping out loud. He has a colorful prose and a knack for startling violence. If you’re looking for a light read that is as engrossing as a pulp novel can be, pick up a copy of “Caught Stealing.” Just be sure to pay for it.

“I follow Uncle Fester as he stumbles away and kick him in the asshole again. He screams and reaches back, but my next kick is already on the way. It lands on his fingers and his pinkie pops out of joint. He’s reeling around now, reaching down between his legs with one hand, grabbing his anus, and waving the other hand in the air, his pinkie sticking out at a right angle to the rest of his fingers. I grab the tail of his shirt and yank it up, dragging his arms over his head. I push him to his knees and kick him three more times on the asshole and flops forward, crying, blood starting to seep through the seat of his pants.”