Blood of Paradise in Around the World in 80 Books

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Oct 23, 2010 Steve rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, crime-mystery-noir, i-spy

The trajectory of writer David Corbett's novel writing career is pretty breathtaking. If he'd been content to write pulpish crime novels like his first effort, The Devil's Redhead, (which is very good) he would have carved a niche, probably not unlike James Ellroy's. Violent, edgy, contemporary, great dialogue, "Redhead" had it all. But his second novel, Done on a Dime, you saw the writer stretching himself. It's an uneven read, due to plotting more than anything else. But what stands out in Cor The trajectory of writer David Corbett's novel writing career is pretty breathtaking. If he'd been content to write pulpish crime novels like his first effort, The Devil's Redhead, (which is very good) he would have carved a niche, probably not unlike James Ellroy's. Violent, edgy, contemporary, great dialogue, "Redhead" had it all. But his second novel, Done on a Dime, you saw the writer stretching himself. It's an uneven read, due to plotting more than anything else. But what stands out in Corbett's sophomore effort is great character development (I'm still intrigued by the Jazz waif, Nadya, who seems like she stepped right out of a Beat novel), and an underlying moral concern for the way things happen to be. It is also the novel that introduces the Force-of-Evil character, Bill Malvasio (Malevolent?), who will feature so prominently in Blood of Paradise.

Blood of Paradise, will be viewed as Corbett's first major novel. It's noir, it's a thriller, but it's also literature, since it steps beyond the narrower confines of genre. You can easily liken the novel to Robert Stone's work (in particular, Flag for Sunrise), or Graham Greene's novels. The location of the novel surprised me - El Salvador. I was also surprised to find that things are as bad as ever down there, enough so to make a rereading of Joan Dideon's Salvador, as something more than a look at old history.

The story itself centers on bodyguard Jude McManus, who is generally a good, but psychologically damaged young man, trying to dig himself out from under the sins of his crooked cop father by just doing his job and keeping things light. Unfortunately for him, his principal job is to protect a hydrologist who is investigating the viability of a soft drink factory and its impact of the area's water table. What spirals out from those seemingly mundane facts is a portrait of El Salvador that is rotten through and through, and a people and culture living on the edge while those in power feast away. But those in power can never have enough, and they see threats everywhere to their profit margin, and the hydrologist just might be a future project.

Their main fixer is bad guy Bill Malvasio, who in a past life was a crooked cop along with Jude's father. Bill is basically a kind of devil, offering Jude hazy deals that will in some way wipe the slate clean. But also coming into the mix is Eileen Browning, a politically active anthropoligist (who is also, sexually, quite acrobatic). Browning serves as something of an angel of light, pulling Jude outside of his shell, helping him to see the suffering and corruption that are all around him. Corbett does a fine job pouring out a lot of recent history, without the speeches flattening out the characters. To integrate such strong political statements into a novel, and not sound like a preacher, is a very hard thing to do, but Corbett pulls it off seamlessly. And when action does occur, it's intense, and nasty. That said however, Browning's intriguing character, seemed to fade as the novel moved on, which is a shame, since Corbett seemed to invest a lot in her. But who knows? Maybe Eileen (and hopefully Nadya) will show up in future novels. And besides, the main card here is Malvasio and Jude. To tell more, would be to cheat the reader. Check it out. ...more

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Jan 16, 2019 Pam marked it as to-read

Shelves: crime-fiction, el-salvador

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Jun 14, 2020 Tuck marked it as to-read

Shelves: edgar-winners-and-nominees

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Around the World in 80 Books