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Book: The Getaway Man
Written by Andrew Vachss (Vintage Books)
Reviewed by Erick Mertz
Author Andrew Vachss looks like a writer of crime fiction; from the eye patch and scowl to his background as a federal investigator, there is the comforting impression that he knows hard types and hard times. His newest novel Getaway Man looks the part too, featuring pulp styled cover with simulated creases and sexy, doe-eyed vixen.
There is enough of a look between author and his book to feed the rapt turning of pages; of course, looks can turn out to be deceiving.
Getaway Man is an exercise of installing hard-boiled language into flat characters. They're tough guys who live tough lives, in and out of the joint, by a stolid, defining code. They get caught - a lot - also making them rather dumb guys. It is maybe too much to expect people like these to function with anything resembling intelligence, but alleged "professionals" who pass through the system's teeth so easily are unfathomable. It's understandable that they don't grow as people but they even don't improve as criminals.
Vachss drops Eddie, his main character and narrator, a drab melding of Rainman and Vincent Vega, into a world where everyone is far more cunning than he is. This leads him into ever deepening trouble and further away from any believability. Far more than an illiterate dolt, Eddie doesn't know the first thing about reading the people he's spent his whole life working for. He is capable of nothing more than parroting back the code he's been fed for years. He is the perfect dupe - too perfect for this book perhaps, because he cannot be read any other way. Vachss tries to breathe a human element in a touching scene with Eddie buying a car from a kindly old woman, but it arrives too late to make any difference.
Hitmen, thieves and pick-purses such as the ones Vachss tries to re-invent are most interesting when they cross into the fringes of "normal society." This makes their story a human study above all. Quentin Tarantino's criminals, for example, talk about Madonna videos and milkshakes in crafty vernacular. On their way to committing acts of unspeakable horror and stupidity, they talk like anyone else except one shade darker. These touches are the hallmarks of memorable characters: we've all sat around diners with greasy Denvers, chatting up MTV, but not like the guys in Reservoir Dogs. Vachss' characters are far more ordinary. They use language beyond the everyday, true, but it is nothing more than recycled bits of really fetching noir.
Does Vachss really expect his readers to believe he invented the term "kid"?
The ending of Getaway Man does come with a twist. However, by the time the trap snaps, the movements are rendered transparent: the stereotypes act their parts and reading up to the last five pages is mere formality. One only finishes Getaway Man to affirm what they know will happen next.
© 2003 - Erick Mertz