Robbers is a highly enjoyable read that wears its influences on its sleeve. Talking only about the story itself, it’s a wild and woolly white-trash wet dream of a road-trippin’ deep-fried nightmare. I’d give it five stars just for its pure sleazoid glee. But when the buzz wears off and you look at the actual writing of it, you can easily see Christopher Cook mining the best tricks of some of his (and our) favorite crime writers.
So yeah, the story: Our two hapless drifters, Eddie and Ray Bob, cut a swath of murder and mayhem through Texas, from Austin south to Galveston and up into the piney woods. Eddie starts it when he comes up short by one lousy penny buying cigarettes. So, for no reason in particular, he shoots the clerk. It’s off to the races after that. It becomes immediately clear that Ray Bob is the real engine behind this killing spree, and equally obvious just how suggestible Eddie is. He says of the first killing, “Only reason I even had the gun is 'cuz you give it to me.” That’s pretty much Eddie in a nutshell. He’s not violent or mean by nature, but is a born follower and goes along with pretty much whatever Ray Bob wants to do, whether it’s robbing stores or raping girls (neither of them succeeds at the latter—Eddie thanks to the better angels of his nature, Ray Bob for other reasons entirely).
Of course, you don’t have much of a story without a tall, handsome Texas Ranger to dog their trail. This is where Rule Hooks comes in. (Seriously, that’s his name.) He’s the perfect archetypal lawman, although he looks more like Porter Waggoner than John Wayne. He’s got the whole act down: the smart, incisive cop logic; the grumpy, jaded bachelor outlook; the irritating, sure-of-everything Texan confidence bordering on arrogance. But he’s also got his own problems, estranged from his college-age daughter, screwing another cop’s wife, and growing increasingly aware of the passage of time. He can’t keep his hands off his nuts, always testing their weight, and feeling them grow ever lighter, or so he imagines.
Into this fairly routine cops-and-robbers game stumbles Della. She’s a young single mother, trying to raise two little boys (named Randy and Waylon—again, really!) on a hairdresser’s salary in a crappy part of town. The quickest and best solution to her problems seems to be to hook up with a rich man, and to that end, we meet her as she sits at the bar of the Holiday Inn, hoping to snare just such a big fish. The one she catches turns out to be into bondage, and in a panic, Della stabs him and runs off down the road in her stiletto heels, soon to meet up with Eddie and Ray Bob. A classic love-triangle ensues: Della and Eddie hit it off, Ray Bob is jealous and mad.
So you have some pretty typical elements here, but Cook stirs them up in just such a way that they stay entertaining. Ranger Hooks’s deepening gloom, even as the trail grows hotter, is an interesting character development. And Della and Eddie are both so dumb, they’re always good for a laugh. The chapters told from Della’s perspective are especially funny, as her voice is so unique, full of women’s magazine wisdom and dimwitted half-baked plans. She clearly has a good heart and is only doing the best she knows how, but Cook avoids being overly sentimental with her.
Now we come to the whole name-that-tune kind of thing I mentioned early on. This book almost reads like a pastiche or a parody of crime novels, if you pay attention. The biggest influence is Stephen Hunter’s Dirty White Boys. You got the two criminal maniacs spreading terror through the land, and one of 'em’s even artistic (turns out Eddie can play acoustic blues like nobody’s business). You got the strong, upstanding pillar of law and order, and he’s even having an affair with a coworker’s wife, just like Bud Pewtie did. And you have the alternating, split-screen perspectives of the two as the book goes on. But Hunter isn’t the only ingredient in the pot. Dialogue is handled like Elmore Leonard, choppy and exactly as the character would speak, only without quotation marks like Cormac McCarthy. Natural scenery—a strong point; you feel like you’re in the car riding with the characters—is reminiscent of James Lee Burke. Hell, Leonard and Burke are both name-checked (Hooks likes to read Burke, and goes to a bookstore where the clerk recommends Leonard). There’s even a Sue Grafton-style identity-swap going on (who is Eddie, really?) that stretches plausibility somewhat. Oh yeah, and Della’s last name is Street. Get it?
A couple other things jump out at me as being not quite right. Early on, Eddie and Ray Bob talk about the Y2K bug and how it ended up not happening, setting the book in 2000. Yet Rule has no idea who Steven Tyler or Aerosmith are, and only a vague idea of the Rolling Stones (and he’s not that old). Similarly, Ray Bob (who we assume is in his 20’s like Eddie), baits some black guys in his hometown with a Run-DMC reference that’s at least a decade out of date. Then there’s Eddie and his blues fetish. Exactly how DOES a young guy from a nowhere town in the late twentieth century come by such an appreciation for deep blues? Not saying it couldn’t happen, but there’s a scene in the car where he breaks into an impromptu lecture on music theory, including subdominant chords, that just seems out of character for somebody who barely has two thoughts to rub together. Cook keeps all this under control, and puts all his scholarly “look at me, I been to college” impulses into the character of Bubba Bear, the old hippie bar-owner who hires Eddie. All the brains Cook kept (mostly) locked away writing about dummies come spilling out through Bubba Bear’s babbling mouth, as he talks about philosophy and poetry and God knows what-all. It comes very close to not working, and only the fact that Bubba Bear is a weird old dude anyway allows it to stay between the ditches.
Reading Robbers is a lot like seeing a really good cover band. Highly derivative but totally entertaining. The plot gets a little weird in spots, but Cook’s sense of atmosphere and dialogue and good ol’ trashy fun saves the day.