A Fine Dark Line

Rating:
Summary: A fine night's read
Review: Remember the days of drive in movies? Remember reading books and comics about your heroes late at night? Remember solving murders and trying not to get killed? Well, maybe you don't remember the last one but Stanley Mitchel does and Joe R. Lansdale has done a masterful job of telling Stanley's tale. This book takes us back to a much simpler time when life was slower but there were still terrors. Stanley and his friends are working on solving the mystery of some old murders and get caught up in a very dangerous chain of events. As in most of Mr. Lansdale's books he does a wonderful job of mixing the mystery and terror with humor and heart.

Rating:
Summary: Lansdale has a talent and landscape that know no boundaries
Review: The arrival of A FINE DARK LINE prompts a legitimate question regarding its author, Joe R. Lansdale: is there anything this guy can't do well? My first encounter with him was THE DRIVE IN, a science fiction horror novel. This was followed by THE MAGIC WAGON --- a gothic western if you will --- and COLD IN JULY, a mystery. Then came the Batman-based CAPTURED BY THE ENGINES, TARZAN'S LOST ADVENTURE, the Jonah Hex comic book story arcs, and on and on and on...and they are all great. So with A FINE DARK LINE, we have a coming of age novel set in rural Texas in the 1950s, a time both better and worse than our own and inexorably linked to it. And, like all his other works that have preceded it, A FINE DARK LINE is his finest work to date.

A FINE DARK LINE is told through the eyes of Stanley Mitchell, a thirteen year-old boy standing on the summer cusp of adolescence, the younger of two children in a family that isn't poverty-stricken but not exactly next door neighbors to Scrooge McDuck, either. No, the Mitchells are the owners and proprietors of the only drive-in theater in Dewmont, Texas. Stanley's youth and innocence are consumed in a slow-burning maelstrom sparked by his discovery of a tin box containing a collection of troubled love letters that ultimately lead him to a burned out house, the mysterious deaths of two young women and secrets that the powers that be in Dewmont would prefer to stay buried. Stanley's unlikely ally is Buster Smith, the projectionist at the theater, an elderly black man whose attempts to drown his demons in alcohol are doomed to failure but who has a depth that only Stanley is aware of. In attempting to solve the mysteries of the deaths of the two women, Stanley exposes not only himself, but also his family and friends, to danger. A FINE DARK LINE, however, is more than a mystery story. It is, ultimately, the tale of a time not so long gone but vanished completely nonetheless. Lansdale uses the mystery as a vehicle to explore the cultural landscape, race relations and sexual mores of the 1950s. What is most remarkable here is that Lansdale is able to capture so perfectly the voice of a 13 year-old boy in that era. I suspect that, to at least some extent, it is his own, some 50 years removed. If so, it resonates within him pitch-perfectly and his translation is unerring.

With A FINE DARK LINE, Lansdale continues to expand the breadth and scope of his literary vision. One could easily come to the conclusion that his talent and landscape know no boundaries. He is a writer who has exceeded the promise of his earliest work and the expectations of his readers --- and will undoubtedly continue to do so.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

Rating:
Summary: ANOTHER JOE. R. LANSDALE WINNER!!
Review: This is a 5 star book! Like his last book, THE BOTTOMS, (The Edgar Winner for Best Mystery Novel), A FINE DARK LINE is also impossible to put
down, takes you to another place in time, such a pleasure to read, I loved this book. I am
in awe of this writer and his infinite imagination. Just read
the other 5 star reviews?

Rating:
Summary: Good but Why?
Review: This is basically The Bottoms revisited. The story is changed a little bit, but the premise is the same, a coming of age story involving a murder mystery in the gone-by south admist the turmoil of ratial inequality. Like the bottoms, it's beatufuly described, and you really care about the characters, even though some of them are simple and ignorant ( I guess that's what makes them real. )

But The Bottoms is much better (in my opinion) and I'm not sure why he even wrote this. Why make an almost carbon copy of a better book?

Still, it's lansdale, and it's good. It's no Drive In Omnibus, but it beats a lot of what's out there. Now if he'd only get back to writing the mojo that made me love his work so much.

Rating:
Summary: Champion Joe has done it again
Review: While this book is very good and very well written, it almost feels like the family from the Bottoms picked up and moved to a drive-in. Don't get me wrong there are big differences between the families, but this is another coming of age story by Champion Joe that involves gruesome murders.

I guess you could call this a sequel in tone to the Bottoms. Once again our hero is a young lad spending his time investigating a couple of grisly murders. What sets this book apart from the Bottoms is that this family is a little more affluent, and live in a nicer town. Also aside from the basic premise of a young man solving murders the stories and characters are completely different.

I enjoyed the fact that the father in A Fine Dark Line is not a perfect man. He has a temper that can go off at any second. He has no qualms about "slapping a teenager smart," or beating on a man who abuses both Stanley's and his own family.

I liked that we actually witnessed the hero, Stanley Jr., getting smarter as the book progressed. I felt the writing style got a little better as the book went on, and since it was written in the first person from Stanley Jr.'s point-of-view, I thought the writing style reflected the protagonist getting smarter.

My one complaint is that this book lacked much of that famous Lansdale dialog. You know the kind. The dialog scenes that would have you belly laughing. Those kinds of dialog.

To be kind, there is a great dialog near the end of the book between Stanley Jr. and one of his family's tormentors. I won't say any more.

"The worm has spoken."