'WHITE CROSSES,'
by LARRY WATSON.
Jeeeessssuzzzz! U want detail in your novels? If you do you will have a life-long best friend in Wisconsin-resident writer Larry Watson.
'White Crosses' is his third novel, and weighing in with 373 hefty pages of smallprint, this sure is one long read. And the underlying bummer - if any - is that very, very, very little happens in it. Whatever you do though, don't let that put you off because Watson's writing style is unbelievably original.
Never are you in any doubt what is going on, because the detail is second-to-none as the characters, locations and motives of anything and everything in writeable-shot of his imagination gets the twice over.
The premise is rather simple. This story focuses on Sheriff Jack Nevelsen who's 'in charge' of small-town Bentrock in the middle of Montana's wilderness. Nothing much ever happens, until a fatal car crash on the edge of town involving the school headmaster and a pupil has the lethal potential to nurture serious tongue wagging. The question is why were they both in the car together, and - more importantly - why were they leaving town together, and apparently in such a rush too?� And that's when genuine nice guy Jack puts on his thinking hat and does some serious investigating, delving as deep and as meaningfully as possible into the obvious professional matter, but also more personal matters as he becomes more and more infatuated with the widow of the headmaster Leo Bauer (RIP), Vivien.
The beauty of the author's prose primarily lies in the fact that the story is free-flowing and so easy to follow. Never is the style cocky or cryptic, yet still there are some startling lines therein that really do stand out�
When thinking about the dead schoolgirl, June Moss, Jack mulls over the situation she'd half gotten herself into: 'What would she know of what it meant to go to work every day, of having to put the welfare of others before your own, of accumulating years and simultaneously shedding dreams?' More intriguingly, she might have even been pregnant, but by whom? And how would Jack break that news to June's mum, on top of June's death, he asks his deputy Wayne?� 'I'm not going to be the one who tells Mrs Moss that her daughter's going to be split open so we can find out if there was a baby in her baby.'
As the plot thickens, the stress understandably gets to poor old Jack - who is clearly obsessed with the work ethic 'To Serve and Protect' - and 'sleep seemed to be a room he could only partially or briefly enter. He kept dreaming his thoughts and thinking his dreams.' His fleeting insomnia isn't helped by his tense home-life, a regime under which his dull wife Nora seems interested in nothing, least of all sex with her loving and caring husband which perplexes him� 'She stayed well within her own modesty and worry, far from the borders of abandon and ecstasy. When Jack resumed his own rhythm, he simply rode toward release, forgoing his concentration on the pleasure of the instant in favour of reaching the conclusion.'
Then to Jack's dismay, the woman in the widow Vivien deals him a blow when she admits she's planning on moving far away to Salt Lake City. By this time Jack is convinced he's fallen in love with her, but he just daren't admit it. Afterall, he is a family man and pillar of the community, so he tries to downplay his emotional recoil to such news as modestly as possible� 'Are you planning to go by yourself?' He didn't look at Vivien when he asked this question; he asked it out of the open window, to the wheat field stretching away to the west.'
Forced to come out with his suppressed desire for Viv, eventually they do irresponsibly plan to 'runaway' together themselves which - given the circumstances surrounding the 'accident investigation' - is the hugest irony to ply of all. And though you really do pray for a happy ending - because Jack genuinely has got a good heart, and just a wife who doesn't appreciate it - the slow-burn of this book builds beautifully to a perfect climax, and a mighty heartbreaking end to the fantastically told tale.
But 373 pages is a lot of pages to read for me to go blow the end for you, so I'm self-restrained with cop-shop cuffs, coolly re-reading 'White Crosses' in the duff.
If you have the time and patience to see this masterpiece of storytelling through, you will seriously reap the reward - dead or alive. (STEVE RUDD)
BOOK INFORMATION� ISBN 0-14-027253-4 Check www.penguin.com