Who Can You Trust?

Out on the Rim a novel by Ross Thomas.  Thomas Dunne Books.  St. Martin’s Minotaur.  340 pp. ***1/2

I used to think I’d like to be a writer like Ross Thomas.  He was an accomplished stylist, had an insider’s knowledge of the world of international intrigue and crime (I’m not sure where he got that), a seemingly endless ability to spin out plots (he actually wrote a series of books with a pseudonym, Oliver Bleeck.  I assume he thought that, if he published too much under his real name, his publisher couldn’t keep up with him).  I also loved one cluster of characters he created, Artie Wu, Quincy Durant, Otherguy Overby, who seemed always to work together (Wu and Durant were lifelong compatriots.  Overby was someone they worked with because of all he knew, but they were slightly uneasy about him.  As well they should have been).

My favorite Thomas novel of all time was Chinaman’s Chance, in which he created these three characters and spun out a plot that was intricate but just right for the size story he was telling.  The book was completely satisfying.  I’d read it again tomorrow.

Out on the Rim shows us the downside of such talent.  If anything, the plot is more intricate than that of Chinaman’s Chance.  An American named Booth Stallings who fought beside a Filipino in World War II is hired to return to the Philippines, where his old friend is now a revolutionary, and offer him $5,000,000 to come down out of the hills, move to Hong Kong, and live a wealthy retirement.  Whoever is offering the money—that isn’t entirely clear—believes it will be worth it to get Alejandro Espiritu out of the revolutionary movement and away from the Philippines, presumably so a corrupt government can continue to operate and whoever is offering the money can make more money.  Corruption is the key ingredient here.  Stallings’ fee for this task will be $500,000, out of which he will pay his own expenses.

After conferring with a few people, he accepts the offer, believing that it can be quite lucrative (he also just got fired from a job).  At the last moment, much to his surprise, he’s joined by a bodyguard and assistant, an extremely capable and sexy woman named Georgia Blue.  She seems to be there to keep an eye on him as much as to protect him.  She also goes to bed with him.  Maybe that was just a perk.

Stallings has been told to enlist three people who will be helpful to him in the Philippines.  Otherguy Overby will be his contact with the other two, Artie Wu and Quincy Durant.  Everyone in this group of five immediately gets the idea that they will somehow manage to get rid of Espiritu, or maybe leave him in the hills, and collect the five million themselves.  A couple of these people, including Otherguy, have plans to get the whole five million for themselves, or maybe split it with Espiritu, but ditch the others.  So we have five people who are working together, only two of whom—Wu and Durant—fully trust each other.  Everyone else is scheming, seeing who will be the more clever.  If they have to kill a few people to accomplish their plan, so be it.

What bothered me immediately was that everybody was operating out of sheer human greed.  Wu and Durant work things around to where they think they’ll be helping the Philippine people, but their immediate motivation is money.  The other thing that troubled me—and this is the danger of a crime novelist who falls in love with his characters—is that Wu and Durant have become caricatures of themselves.  Wu is the sage Oriental, smoking his large cigars, dressing immaculately, spinning out plans that are better than anything the others can come up with.  Durant has become a sinister character, “that fucking Durant,” as he suddenly seems to be known, who is the enforcer for the duo and is very difficult to defeat.  He’s also, somehow, irresistible to women (Wu is a happily married man).  These men don’t develop as characters, as they did in Chinaman’s Chance.  And they don’t seem fully realized.  They’re walking through the motions.

The plot is intricate beyond belief.  They encounter not only Espiritu, but his young and beautiful wife (young enough that she originally introduces herself as his granddaughter); also a society woman from Manila who, though married, is Durant’s girlfriend; and an Australian with the weird name of Boy Howdy who is in charge of all kinds of criminal and corrupt practices in Manila, and seems to be plotting with somebody or other against our five heroes.  Booth Stallings seems to be in way over his head.  Georgia Blue is a treacherous human being and a loose cannon.  And Otherguy Overby is just himself.  Whatever gets him the most money and keeps him alive is what he’s doing.

As long as I’m complaining, this edition of the novel, which looks good on the outside, and comes from what I think of as a good publisher, was printed just for me (the new way of keeping books in print.  The printing date is on the last page of the book), and the printer seemed to be running out of toner.  About a third of the pages are faded, to the point where I could hardly read them.  This is the book industry in 2023?  Makes you want to read everything on a Kindle.

Thomas was entitled to a slip every now and then.  In this novel, less plot would have been more.