My rating: 2 of 5 stars
In his novel Internecine, David J. Schow uses the word “internecine” a few times, and even has his narrator suggest one “look it up.” Personally, I can’t stand it when writers start a piece with a dictionary definition (my brother-in-law says I have a problem with authority, and he’s right– I denounce any authority the dictionary has been given by the sheep-like masses (what Internecine‘s narrator would call “the walking dead”)) and while this novel doesn’t explicitly do that, it might has well have, amiright?
This is, indeed, the story of one man’s struggle against some kind of organization, an innocent caught up in a spy-vs-spy plot more complicated than this analogy is attempting to be. It’s the second book I’ve read in the last few weeks where the main character is dragged along a whirlwind plot that barely gives him time to rest. The kind of thing we too-readily accept and even expect in our action-thriller movies. I’m making assumptions, of course, but I got to believe these guys are writing novels they hope will be easily rewritten for the screen.
Which is a not a bad thing, necessarily, although I am complaining about it. Juxtaposed with this break-neck pacing–couched in terms of man in over his head– are almost countless lectures about how the world works. How Hollywood, Madison Avenue, Politics, Espionage, and Day-to-Day Drudgery all work. You see the contradiction there? It’s almost hypocritical.
Yeah, it’s all explained in the end, via a neat little “Afterword” that seeks to justify the narrator’s voice. I think I would have enjoyed the book more– or cut it more slack, anyway– if I had read that section first.
I’ll say this for Schow, though, his prose style is just fine– slick, tight, compelling. And although I am complaining about the non-stop action, at least he knows how to make it beleivable. He can thank the movies for that, somewhat, in as much as I’ve learned to suspend my disbeleif and allow for a few super-human acts of parkour/marksmanship/strategizing/luck. You know what I mean. Leaping over a table to kick the first bad guy into the second bad guy so he shoots the third bad guy.
Folks who love deep-spy type books won’t like this one too much, as it’s got more gunplay that plot. But folks who love run-n-gun style shoot ’em ups won’t like this book either, as what plot it does have is nearly serpentine. So who will like this book? Folks who like to read movies, I guess.