In his article “In the Mind of Others” (shared on Facebook by a friend; and now —surprise, surprise!— on sale online for six bucks or so; sorry I ain’t buyin’) Keith Oatley addresses the fact that psychologists, who for a long time scorned fiction, have recently revised their judgement and declared it beneficial to one’s social skills. The reason for the initial derision was that fiction was “made up.” Not real. In other words, an act of imagination. That Sigmund Freud dug out the expression “Oedipus Complex” right out of mythology (an ancient form of fiction) was totally ignored in that judgement, apparently. Some eastern philosophies affirm that it is all a dream, that nothing is real. What I know is that, be it dream or reality, without imagination, nothing could happen. I wouldn’t be hitting keys of my laptop under a cozy roof with
good heating, for example. Imagination is the act that allows other happenings, fiction being one of its most gripping manifestations.

As well as the cheapest, and possibly most engaging traveling mode. It will take you places you will recognize, even if you have never been there. You will meet characters who resemble Cousin Ernie or Aunt Lucille. Or, if you are a fantasy reader, you will want to be that hero. And if you dig within, you will find that part of you is that hero, at least potentially. In a novel, you will discover poetry within descriptions, emotions. The characters’ reflections on the human condition will make you ponder upon important questions, engage in a dialogue with such characters as if they existed. If the author is talented, characters will become your friends or personal enemies. (Faulkner talked to his personages as if they were made of flesh and bones, and as a fiction writer, I can totally comprehend that.) Scarlet O’Hara? Emma Bovary? Didn’t you cry with them, for them? Get mad at them? Most importantly, identify with them?

Fiction has the capacity to embrace it all: a vision of reality, of dream, of philosophy. And, yes, psychology.

And what would be a mystery without psychology?

Crais’ L.A. Requiem noir whodunit is full of it. An author who obviously loves his craft, he avoids cliches and oversimplifications no matter how secondary the characters. Good crime fiction never draws clean, parallel roads where you can find your way in a jiffy. Its geography is filled with detours. Crais follows that map, with a twisted plot and tormented souls. His lovable characters can be annoying, and the despicable ones have their moments.

And then there are the peculiar ones.

How he manages to make a feminist-pacifist like me root for taciturn, macho, and, if not trigger-happy, trigger-fluent detective Joe Pike is quite remarkable. Psychologists might argue that it may be because I identify with Pike. Which may be true: I have my bouts of withdrawal and unreasonable pride now and then. I seldom use guns, though; and when I do, it’s only in my mind. But I can tell them: See the power of a novel?

The plot: Karen Garcia, a former lover of Joe Pike’s, has been brutally murdered, and her father hires two private detectives, narrator Elvis Cole and his partner, former cop Joe Pike, to find the murderer. But the L.A.P.D. get in their way. Are the city cops in to solve this murder? Or do they have an agenda of their own? One thing is sure, they don’t like Pike, as they are convinced he is responsible for the death of one of their colleagues.

Samantha Dolan, the only cop collaborating with the two private detectives is brilliant, beautiful, but also a profoundly troubled soul with a penchant for tequila.

The background of these circumvolute happenings is Los Angeles, with its valleys and beaches and infinite highways. It might also be Crais’ most beautiful character. I have driven through the six lane L.A. freeways, sped North and South of Hollywood; I have contemplated the illuminated expanses of land at night; and felt sorry for the palm trees eaten up by drought and pollution; for the homeless agglutinated on the Santa Monica Beach just miles away from affluence. And with the exception of semi-bohemian Venice Beach, I have felt no affinity for the town. Yet, Crais’s atmospheric description rose some vague nostalgia within. Here, he paints a place I knew but have not seen. He manages to print poetry on the asphalt of its freeways. They become instruments of meditation. It’s not that they lead nowhere, but that they lead you don’t know where. They’re full of existential melancholy, as are the San Fernando Valley and the Santa Monica Mountains and the Sunset Boulevard dying into the beach. Flashy Rodeo Drive doesn’t manage to kill that sense of impermanence. But in all these lights and spaciousness Crais, through the eyes of Elvis Cole, finds beauty. He is in love with his city. He declares it plainly. As a reader, you get it. A place you love is part of you. Crais’s writing is so powerful that I almost feel that L.A. is part of me as well.

And amidst all this, he never forgets humor. Humor, as a sense of measure to prevent grandiloquence.

Now, about the ending. So many writers today write a good plot and then abandon the reader with an unremarkable, even rushed conclusion. The finish here is doctored, and certainly not formulaic. Ambiguity is one of the guests, along with new roads, new possibilities. But the all-is-well-that-ends-well is avoided, thank God! Nothing indigestible, i.e. so filled with sweetness and easy tears you feel like going on bread and water for a month. No, our narrator faces tough decisions while aware life will make some of them for him and he will have to go with the flow. It’s very much in harmony with the often desertic mountains and valleys of the decor. So when I finished L.A. Requiem, I kissed the book. For being real. Or at least as close to real as psychologists and the rest of us think real is.