Anthony Neil Smith
260 pp. Bleak House Books. $14.95
Pub. Date: 5/15/2008
ISBN-13: 9781932557718
Reviewed by Paul Stotts
Publisher Blurb: Deputy Billy Lafitte is not unfamiliar with the law--he just prefers to enforce it, rather than abide by it. But his rule-bending and bribe-taking have gotten him kicked off the force in Gulfport, Mississippi, and he's been given a second chance--in the desolate, Siberian wastelands of rural Minnesota. Now Billy's only got the local girls and local booze to keep him company.
Until one of the local girls--cute little Drew, bassist for a psychobilly band--asks Billy for help with her boyfriend. Something about the drugs Ian's been selling, some product he may have lost, and the men who are threatening him because of it. Billy agrees to look into it, and before long he's speeding down a snowy road, tracking a cell of terrorists, with a severed head in his truck's cab. And that's only the start.
Is there anything as good as a bad cop? The kind of cop that bends the rules, always blazing his own trail, interpreting the law in a way that suits him. Payoffs? He takes them. Kicking some ass and busting heads? In a good day's work. Murder? Sometimes you've got to put a dog down. The bad cop is a crime fiction staple—the lawman who's above the law. The bad cop is a symbol of power's corrupting influence and how law can break down. It is the introduction of chaos in an orderly society; it is for people who enjoy pulling out a string to see how the whole cloth unravels.
In Anthony Neil Smith's Yellow Medicine, Deputy Billy Lafitte is a bad cop—not necessarily a bad man; he struggles with that conflict. But he isn't big on the rules. Who needs rules when you are patrolling the suburban snow fields of Minnesota. So Billy takes liberties, takes advantage of people, often in unseemly ways. There isn't too many people Billy cares about—including himself. Except for Drew, the bassist for a local psychobilly band. Billy struggles with his feelings for her.
Which is how he finds himself caught up with a terrorist cell looking to make inroads in the suburban Minnesota meth trade. Things only go downhill from there.
I've been reading Victor Gischler's novels recently, and it is through Gischler's work that I came to discover Anthony Neil Smith. And I'm fortunate I did. Smith writes with a bleakness and isolation that matches the snowy Minnesota roads that Deputy Lafitte patrols, as well as the starkness of Lafitte's soul. Yellow Medicine isn't just a crime drama; it is Lafitte struggling with his actions and decisions. It is about a man asking himself: Where did my life go wrong? Maybe he has the answer, but he can't seem to break his pattern of making bad decisions.
And this makes good crime fiction. Conflicted characters whose inner demons manifest in their view and interaction with the world. The turmoil inside the man reflected in the violence we see in the world. Smith doesn't provide easy answers, or any answers for that matter, that is left up to the reader. This is evident in the book's final sentence, which will either annoy or cause you to applaud. I love the starkness, unapologetic nature of Yellow Medicine and how Anthony Neil Smith doesn't spoon-feed the reader offering a simple resolution. Just the way crime fiction should be.
If you haven't discovered Anthony Neil Smith yet and you love crime noir stories, I highly recommend you give Yellow Medicine a try. A highly addictive, non-stop ride that buries you under a barrage of punches that you never see coming. It's a good old-fashioned punch in the mouth. But in a good way.
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