UNFAITHFUL SERVANT (2004) by Timothy
Harris
Reviewed by Barry Ergang
I
might as well say this right at the beginning: Unfaithful Servant is one of the best hardboiled detective novels
I’ve read in a long time.
I
discovered Timothy
Harris’s work in the early 1980s
when I stumbled upon a paperback edition of Good
Night and Good-Bye. Cover copy hyped it as being “in the tradition of The Long Goodbye,” which automatically demanded
that I read it because The Long Goodbye is my favorite novel. Read it I did, and found some
similarities to Raymond Chandler’s masterwork, but was also pleased to see that,
unlike too many other authors who tried unconvincingly to imitate Chandler,
Harris chose to write in his own style, which is colorful and entertaining. As
a result of loving the book, which I later acquired in hardback, I bought a
copy of Kyd for Hire, Harris’s first
novel about Southern California private investigator Thomas Kyd, which I recall
thinking reminded in me ways of The Big
Sleep, and which I also quite enjoyed.
Then I
waited over thirty years for another Thomas Kyd novel. Fortunately, Unfaithful Servant—which description can
refer to Kyd as well as to others in the story—was eminently worth the wait.
When
Kyd is approached by fourteen-year-old Hugo Vine, who offers him a
fifteen-thousand-dollar Rolex to watch his parents, his refusal sets the boy raging
insults and obscenities at him. A few months later he encounters Hugo yet
again. Their conversation is brief because Kyd is on a case and hasn’t time for
a lengthy chat.
Hugo is
the son of Hollywood actress Sally Vine and her late producer husband Daniel
Vine, as Kyd learns when he’s contacted by Sally’s lawyer and summoned to the
Vine home, threatened with the charge of contributing to the delinquency of a
minor. In attendance at the meeting are the lawyer, Hugo’s therapist, a deputy
city attorney, and a Robbery-Homicide detective with an attitude. It isn’t
until the meeting ends that Kyd meets Raj LaSalle, Sally’s current husband, and
Sally herself. The actress transparently manipulates the reluctant Kyd into
accepting the job of keeping an eye on Hugo, who may or may not be using or
dealing drugs, to learn what he’s up to and to prevent him from getting into
trouble.
Doing
so results in a stormy relationship with a determined, possibly disturbed, and
ultimately endangered Hugo because it isn’t long before Kyd learns that the boy
is certain his father’s death was not a skiing accident but a deliberate
murder, and that he, Hugo, is not only sure he knows who the killer is, but
also knows someone who claims to have witnessed the crime. As Kyd probes
further, additional deaths occur, at least one of which he’s accused of, and he
has to contend with cops who are honest but suspicious as well as others who are corrupt and brutal; sycophants
with delusions of cinematic grandeur and their monied idols; tabloid
“journalists;” a lawyer friend whose eye is always on the big,
constantly-remunerative score; and those who would harm a savvy but justifiably
depressed fourteen-year-old kid.
A
successful screenwriter, Timothy Harris knows his turf, vividly evoking the Hollywood
film community and the southern California landscape, external and internal. Building steadily to an
intense finish, this is an excellently-paced novel in which the characters,
major and minor alike, are three-dimensionally configured and examined
insightfully. Not the least of these is Kyd himself. Unlike the heroes of most
private eye series, about whom we’re told mostly superficial things and shown only
their quotidian routines, Kyd reveals significant moments about his past,
including boyhood and familial circumstances and events that shaped the man he
has become, that were the geneses of some of the demons he must contend with
now.
Unfaithful Servant was originally released in a hardcover edition from Five Star
Publishing, which sells mainly to libraries. From what I’ve seen at Internet
sites, booksellers are asking high prices for it both in hardcover and advanced
reading copy paperback editions. As far as I’m aware, it has never been
released in a trade or mass market paperback edition. I read it in reasonably-priced
Kindle edition from Endeavour Press, which came out in 2014, but have not been
able to find it in other electronic formats.
As
has become all too typical in both physical and electronic books nowadays, this
one has a few typos and some incorrect punctuation. Fortunately they’re
relatively few, and most readers will find them ignorable. Two errors that
stood out for me were venal, in
discussing sin, when venial was the
intended word; and Invisible Man model
when the old Visible Man plastic
model is what Harris meant. The other errors are not likely to disrupt a
reader’s flow.
Unfaithful Servant is a must-read for fans of hardboiled private eye novels—provided they aren’t squeamish about
street language and graphic violence. Although Harris doesn’t inundate the
reader with raunchy verbiage, he doesn’t shy away from it when it serves to
delineate someone’s manner of expressing himself and his feelings. Some of the
violence is very explicit, especially that in a climactic moment in which a
character gets his comeuppance. I found it satisfying; others may find it gross.
Timothy
Harris, in my estimation, is a top-tier writer who merits the same kind of
accolades and esteem accorded to masters of the genre Dashiell Hammett, Raymond
Chandler, Ross Macdonald, and Lawrence Block, among others. I highly recommend
the title under consideration here and its two predecessors, which I should reread
one of these days. The big question is whether there will be another Thomas Kyd
novel—and when. I hope the answers are Yes
and Soon because I probably don’t
have another thirty years ahead of me.
Barry Ergang ©2015, 2019
Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s written work has
appeared in numerous publications, print and electronic. Some of it is
available at Amazon and at Smashwords. His website is http://www.writetrack.yolasite.com/.
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