Marilyn Stasio Wants New Blood
PROBABLE CAUSE by Theresa Schwegel leads the New York Times crime fiction review this week. Schwegel’s second novel is juxtaposed with Marcus Sakey’s THE BLADE ITSELF, a debut reviewed by Janet Maslin last week. Chicago is the common ground for these young writers whose work is garnering praise and the sort of attention publicists dream of. I enjoyed both books, feeding my inner Harriet Klausner rich portions of sublime indulgence, yet preserving vestigial parts of my brain once devoted to critical thinking.
Ed Champion would scream bloody murder if privy to the inner sanctum of your reporter’s Gray Lady shock and awe, or the mysterious amusement I derive at the sight of Newt Gingrich. I can only say in my defense that reading fiction reviews in the NYT supports Einstein’s theorum that we’re all working on Maggie’s farm in the hopes of an occasional brownie.
Not that Theresa Schwegel or Marcus Sakey got bad reviews, far from it, although “self-absorbed and anxious” is the way Stasio describes young crime writers of today. I could take a stab at figuring out what that means, but I’m still reading THE BLADE ITSELF and have reached the point in the story where the beginning and the end intersect. Yes, take the brownie from my plate.
What the two novels share is simple: a single event alters the protagonists’ life in a negative way. The authors don’t stray far from the centerline. Sakey is a more active observer than Schwegel, who is less of a romantic about setting. Schwegel is understated and Sakey can overwrite when emphasizing his character’s moral dilemma. Self-absorption is strictly limited to the characters on the page, which is sort of the point of both stories.