Lake Charles

The year is 1979. Charged with the murder of Ashleigh Sizemore, with whom he spent a drug- and sex-driven night in a motel, awakening in a haze to find her dead in bed beside him, and at present out on bail and awaiting trial, Brendan Fishback wants nothing more than a relaxing Saturday of fishing on Lake Charles near his hometown of Umpire in Tennessee’s Smoky Mountains. With him are his best friend and brother-in-law, Cobb Kuzawa, and his sister Edna, Cobb’s wife. The couple has been separated for a while, and whether their marriage will survive is debatable. Brendan hopes that having them together on this outing might move them to reconcile.

The two young men take their bass boats out into the water, and Edna rides her jet ski. She and Cobb continue wrangling until she angrily takes off on the jet ski and roars out of sight. When she doesn’t return, Brendan and Cobb begin to search for her. The search results in sudden death and more difficulties and complications for Brendan as he, with the added help of Cobb’s Korean War-veteran father Jerry Kuzawa, a man whose attitude is ever shoot first and damn the consequences, tangles with or tries to dodge a variety of individuals. These include a pair of corrupt sheriff’s deputies; the operators, enforcers and mules of a grand-scale marijuana-growing operation; DEA agents; a lawyer of dubious character; and Ralph Sizemore, the wealthy, vicious and vengeful father of Ashleigh who is both politically connected and a potential candidate for office. In dreams and reveries, Brendan converses with Ashleigh and gradually pieces together what happened in the motel room that led to her demise.

Central to the story’s action is the man-made Lake Charles, symbol of man-made corruption, violence, evil, darkness and death.

Before I start picking nits, I want to emphasize that I greatly enjoyed and can recommend this tense, hard-charging coming -of-age thriller to readers who aren’t easily offended by occasional raw language.

Besides having written several other novels as well as short stories and non-fiction articles, Ed Lynskey’s background includes poetry published in prestigious journals and mainstream literary magazines like *The Atlantic Monthly*. His sense of language shows in Lake Charles which, in an era when a minimalist approach to narrative seems to be the norm, has its own vivid, distinctive style. Lynskey long ago learned that well-chosen action verbs replace the need for too many adjectives and adverbs: “I staggered into the bathroom where its vent fan clanked away. My tingling fingers lay a lit match to a Marlboro. I inhaled, bagged the soothing nicotine, and exhaled smoke. I lived in a nightmare, branded as a killer, but now I was free on bail. The sheriff’s deputies could jug me again at any time. My second, deeper puff calmed my jangled nerves. I knew organic causes explained why the dead girl ransacked my dreams.”

Sometimes, however, he gets carried away and certain word choices (taking poetic license?) might, as they did with me, yank the reader out of the story to consider them. *Bagged* in the preceding example, for instance. Another example is the smoker who doesn’t merely light a cigarette, he Zippos it, the lighter’s brand-name becoming a verb. Speaking of a former girlfriend named Salem, Brendan says: “But hell, I reasoned, I’d meet a galore of other Salems.” *Galore* is an adjective, not a noun.

Reminiscent of some of the lesser pulp magazine fiction from the Thirties and Forties are overwrought passages like this: “Resentful blood heated by the new rage blasted into my face as I nodded.” Others are unintentionally silly: “As we crested the last knoll, the mansion’s glittery windows vaulted into our eyes.” The bizarre (and physically impossible) image this conjures up is not the risible effect the author wants, even though the reader understands what he’s trying to convey. Then there are the clumsy sentences—e.g., “My walk headed to the spot where he stood.”

Nevertheless, I applaud Lynskey’s lexical enthusiasm and his willingness to err on the side of overzealousness over blandness.

He has a couple of verbal quirks I can’t help remarking on because they show up frequently throughout the novel and because they once again pulled me out of the story for a beat or two while I thought about them. The first is the use of a construction common enough in narrative and exposition but—at least in my experience—utterly uncommon in dialogue. I can’t recall ever having seen it used in fictional dialogue, and I’m sure I’ve never heard it in real-life conversations. Yet throughout the novel a number of Lynskey’s characters employ it frequently when speaking to others. Examples include the lawyer Herzog: “More of a hunting enthusiast, I shun the violence but savor the excitement of the chase”; Brendan: “Actually a little under the weather, Cobb is taking it easy”; Alicia: “Stacking on the pounds, I’ll burst apart like a whacked piñata” and “Strict Catholics, they don’t hold with abortion and help girls like me.” Unless this usage is a regionalism I’m simply unfamiliar with, I’d call (to alter one of the examples) “Cobb is actually under the weather and taking it easy” a more normal conversational construction.

The other quirk is the use of *to* in sentences where *of* is more common: “The hypnotic thrum to the truck tires eating up the hardtop enticed me into the realm of dreams, an all too familiar terrain.” “The mustiness to old books and lemon furniture polish hosed over us.”

I was 32 in 1979 so my memory may be faulty, but I can’t help thinking some of the expressions Lynskey uses here and there throughout the novel are anachronisms. At the very end of Chapter 21, Herzog says, “That’s a no brainer.” In one of Brendan’s dream moments with Ashleigh, she asks if someone’s van isn’t “da bomb.” In another, Brendan wonders if her mention of a motel is a “booty call.” Jerry Kuzawa advises Brendan to “keep it real.” Did any or all of these expressions enter the language in or prior to 1979?

In exchange for my objective review, I received a copy of the electronic edition of the novel from the author. I can’t speak to the physical edition, but better proofreading is definitely in order for the e-book. There are a multitude of sentences throughout that lack necessary or contain unnecessary commas. There are also a couple of lines of dialogue that are ungrammatical but shouldn’t be because the speakers are not semi-literate individuals: “‘How many jurors have Sizemore bought off like he did you?'” and “‘I’ve never took one dime.'” Ungrammatical narrative passages: “The screen of silver maples hid us rather than our parking at his gate protected by a guardhouse.” “Flanked only by the canyons of unread books diverted us on to the kitchen.”

There are several places where word choices are wrong or, at the very least, highly suspect—italics [asterisk brackets] mine: “Room 7 at the Chewink Motel in Yellow Snake, Tennessee, sat primed to accommodate cheap *rendezvouses* and cheaper murders.” (“Rendezvous” is both singular and plural.) “Anxiety over Edna’s *strife* diverted me as my sore gaze traveled out to the state road.” (What is a “sore” gaze?) “Kuzawa chuckled *as* an escapee sprung from the lobotomy ward.” “Armpit sweat *eked* a slime trail down my ribcage.” “The middle-aged clerk, still slender with *prim* breasts, seated at a walnut desk was dabbing a piece of sticky Scotch tape to pick the lint off her uniform blazer.” (How exactly are breasts “prim”? There should be a comma after “desk,” and “sticky” is needless when describing Scotch tape.) “Chatting with Alicia *on* the drought causing the brush-and-timber fires, Mr. Kuzawa pointed a finger at the cut-off swerving into a deserted, shady wayside.” (“On” or “about”? Moreover, I don’t think the hypens in “brush and timber” are necessary.)

Redundancies: “*Soon* after, we *soon* crested the treed mountains and, with my ears popping, swooped down into the next leafy draw.” “Out Mr. Kuzawa’s window, the *cerise red* streaks painted Wednesday’s breathtaking sunrise on the indigo horizon.” (Italics mine.)

I must now reiterate that despite the preceding cavils, I highly recommend LAKE CHARLES as an exciting, absorbing, and compelling read. Fans of *noir* thrillers who aren’t repelled by the occasional use of street language will find it somewhat different from the run-of-the-mill, and worth their time.

© 2013 Barry Ergang

Note that I read and reviewed this in 2013, so it’s possible the author has corrected some of the nits I’ve picked in the electronic edition. I’ve not been informed one way or the other.