The Mean Streets

Rating:
Summary: These Streets Are Better Once They Get Meaner.
Review: This is the first Thomas Dewey novel I've read. I learned of him from the Internet, where someone called him a bridge between Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald. I guess that's a fair statement: he is a world-weary PI telling his tale in the first-person, plenty tough, but "not himself mean," as Chandler's famed essay outlines (and from which this book's title is taken). But this novel from 1954 seems much more similar to a couple of other contemporaries who I will name later. It is not without deficiencies and dated elements (novels dealing with juvenile delinquency always seem to date worse than Chandler-esque PI novels), but is definitely good enough that I want to try more of Dewey's novels.

A PI known simply as Mac is hired by the city administration in a burg reminiscent of Chicago to impersonate a teacher and baseball coach, ingratiate himself with some of the local toughs, and find out who is funding and organizing all the gang activity. Things don't go according to plan when Joey, his ace-in-the-hole, gets injured during practice and rejoins his drug-dealing, rumbling inner city pals. Joey idolizes his older brother Louis, a small-time hood with bigger connections, and Mac has to try to break through to him. Things get further complicated when the boy who hit Joey with the pitch turns up dead. There are other characters in the plot I will not reveal.

The mystery is not baffling, and there were no real surprises, including the ultimate identity of the gang leader known only as Mr. Smith, but the book held my interest and built in tension throughout. It also got much better once it got tougher about halfway through, when Mac was exposed as being a private cop, was framed with dirty pictures and had his partnership with the city dissolved.

The lone man versus vast yet evanescent gang is a situation like Mike Hammer might have found himself in, only Mac is much gentler; I had to wait many pages before he allowed himself to pound Louis, who kept hassling him and acting like big shot. Then Mac did it competently, satisfyingly and repeatedly, enough so that I may call this novel "hard-boiled." Other plot elements involving sad, long buried family secrets invoke Lew Archer's recurring themes. These comparisons are not made to say the book is hackneyed or unoriginal; I thought the PI-meets-JD angle made it unusual among books I have read. And while the early stages seemed to lack a sufficient threat, a return to a more murder-and-missing person-related plot actually increased the sense of danger by decreasing the scope.

Only near the end does the book falter again slightly, when Joey has his moment of truth, and must choose between hooliganism and another way of life, as represented here by a poster of Joe Dimaggio. It did not detract too severely from the momentum built up, but was a little corny when read today. And the mechanics of the gang, although enjoyable, seemed less than authentic; secret underground meetings where young teens are fed propaganda through a loudspeaker by the unseen Mr. Smith recall old WW2 spy movies or Red Scare thrillers. Downtrodden teens so cynical in every other way and mistrustful of authority would in reality be unlikely candidates for such brainwashing.

Never mind that. This is a good book for vintage mystery fans, tough in places, sensitive in others. Hmmm... maybe this *is* a bridge between Chandler and MacDonald.