Master of Crime

Chinaman’s Chance by Ross Thomas.  Mysterious Press.  334 pp.  *****

It’s been years since I’ve read a mystery/crime novel, except for the work of Elmore Leonard, which I reread avidly when it came out in the Library of America (no one told a story better than Elmore Leonard.  No one).  Some years ago I read such books frequently, partly because I loved them, partly because I felt I could learn from them, about storytelling, character development, pacing.

I of course read the classic writers, Chandler and Hammett (I much preferred Chandler, specifically for his unique use of language.  Hammett’s plotting and pace were better, but Chandler was a prose poet).  I read the various American imitators of such men, like Ross MacDonald and John D. McDonald, also Robert B. Parker, but, though I enjoyed their books, I always thought they didn’t touch the great masters.  At a friend’s suggestion I read Dorothy Sayers, who I thought was a brilliant writer, to the point where the mystery disappeared in the larger story.  I loved Rex Stout.  I also enjoyed Tony Hillerman, though I was reading him largely for his portrayal of Native Americans.  But I never became a mystery addict (I’ve known a few.  It’s a real affliction.  People complained about it as if they were drug users).

My favorite of all such writers is Ross Thomas, though it’s hard to place him in a genre.  He often writes about spies, or former spies, but he’s not a spy novelist.  He doesn’t write classic mysteries, though there’s often a mystery plot in his books.  He’s not a crime novelist like Leonard, though he seems to know the world of crime, especially high stakes big money crime, very well.  He may just have had a vivid imagination.

I encountered his work when I was reviewing books for Robert Wilson, who began at the Washington Post and moved eventually to USA Today.[1]  He’s the one who told me about Thomas, mentioning Chinaman’s Chance in particular.  Thomas also reviewed for Bob, and on the one occasion when I was visiting USA Today, Bob showed me a review by Thomas that had just come in.  I was immediately embarrassed by the copy I generally sent, which was carefully written but casually formatted.  Thomas’ review was perfectly laid out; it could have gone in the paper as it was (this was in the day when we were using typewriters, not computers).  I thought of him as the ultimate professional.  His novels have that feel as well.

Chinaman’s Chance introduces us to three of his most memorable characters, Artie Wu (the pretender to the Chinese emperor’s throne), Quincy Durant, and Otherguy Overby (who got his name by always saying that the other guy did it).  They have known each other for years, and been on various capers together.  All three are con men of one kind or another (Wu and Durant met at an orphanage when they were children, a place that they escaped together at the age of fourteen and began making their way in the world, getting by any way they could), but they’re lovable con men, who are generally conning much worse criminals in high stakes battles of wits.  The stakes are high because these people would kill them in a heartbeat.  But Wu and Durant have been dealing with such characters since they were fourteen.

Talk about elaborate plots.  Artie was jogging on a Malibu beach one morning (he’s an unlikely jogger, a big impressive man who is strong and able but maybe thirty pounds overweight, all in his belly) when he tripped over a dead pelican and fell, spraining his ankle.  He was rescued by a man named Randall Piers, whom he had seen other mornings on the beach, in fact every morning, walking six greyhounds.  Piers helps him up to Durant’s house, which is nearby, watches while Durant expertly cares for his friend, and becomes interested in the men, partly because they have a ticker in the room telling them what’s happening in the stock market (they have plans to jump on some stock for an easy profit).  Piers is intrigued and asks them to his house that evening for drinks.  As it turns out he has a fabulous house, including marble stairs up from the beach (182 of them, eighteen inches deep, fashioned from Italian marble), and a vast number of rooms.

Piers is married to a woman named Lace Armitage, one of three sisters who were famous in their day as country singers.  Ivory Armitage had been the girlfriend of a gangster and died of a drug overdose; Silk is an activist and do-gooder who had recently been having an affair with a congressman but took off when he was mysteriously murdered.  She’s been living underground ever since, and her sister is worried about her.  Piers, who is fabulously wealthy, asks Wu and Durant if they might be any help any locating her.

Why us? they ask innocently.  That isn’t the kind of work we do.

Actually, they had staged the whole thing so Piers would hire them.  Including the dead Pelican.

Piers, though vastly wealthy, isn’t the bad guy in this drama.  The bad guys are the ones who have taken over a little seaside town called Pelican Bay, where the congressman was murdered.  They have plans to make a lot of money from this place, on the backs of a number of poor people, and they’re happy to eliminate anyone who tries to stop them.  Wu and Durant are in on this caper because they have a longstanding grudge against one of these conspirators, but also, as always, because there’s a lot of money to be made, robbing the rich not to give to the poor, but at least getting the rich off the backs of the poor.  They’re doing it for the money.

You won’t read a more elaborate plot, or a more engaging group of characters, in any novel I know.  This is at least the third time I’ve read the book through the years, and it’s been great every time.  I still haven’t figured out all the ins and outs of the plot.

Maybe I need to read it a fourth time.

[1] An unlikely place for a book page, but Bob used all his old writers from the Post, paid higher fees for shorter reviews, and only reviewed the best books.  They ran only three reviews per week.