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John ran through the high desert, away from his grave.
The easiest book reviews to find are extreme praise or extreme criticism. If the reader hasn't felt intense emotions reading a book, it's unlikely he'll find it pertinent to review it. I have written so many book reviews that I have learned to figure my way around the extremes, but it always fascinates me when an author gets the extreme treatment. In 2013, I don't remember anybody in the hardboiled fiction community receiving higher praise than Jordan Harper. Everybody I know who's read AMERICAN DEATH SONGS absolutely loved it. That was enough for me to want to form my own opinion. I can't really argue with the crowd here. Not every story made my heart beat, but when Jordan Harper strikes a nerve, he goes for the kill. We both know how bad I like that.
Usually, I am not big on the ''collected stories'' format. I find there is no cohesiveness to it, that rather than display a creative range, it shows a certain immaturity of vision. This is the format Jordan Harper used for AMERICAN DEATH SONGS as the stories were all published in short story magazines at one time or the other. But Harper's vision doesn't lack maturity. It's a powerful object. My favorite story of the collection is called AGUA DULCE and it is about the most engrossing apocalyptic shootout scene I've ever read. There is no hero in that story, no justification and very little background (which is a detail I appreciated). There is just a tweaker running from skinheads, through the Californian desert. Jordan Harper transmitted otherworldly emergency of events that could end your life. It had such a brutal effect on me, I had to sit down and collect myself after reading it.
From memory, I cannot recall an author who can write violence better than Jordan Harper does. It is a variable that is often rushed and poorly written in hardboiled fiction, but not in AMERICAN DEATH SONGS. Violence is an integral part of how Harper writes. There is a poetry to how his characters move. It's very vivid, visual and you get the strange impression that the characters have given themselves up to a greater, darker force. It's as if violence is an invisible character, pulling strings from behind the page. The story PLAYING DEAD is basically just a ballet of atrocity, but it is so well put together. The images so logically follow one another that the characters take their shape through these life or death moments and define themselves through the very little variables that Jordan Harper exposes. Really, nobody writes violence quite like him.
He played ball in school, and had those fancy-cut muscles the young men had these days. They look real nice, but they're like flowers grown in a hothouse that would die if you planted them out in the real world.
Another brilliant variable of AMERICAN DEATH SONGS that established a strong sense of cohesiveness and identity to the collection was Jordan Harper's use of the American territory and the American culture as, once again, some kind of character. It is an idea used with terrific versatility by the author as in MIDNIGHT RIDER, he uses it to gain the reader's empathy. Who hasn't got carried away by a song? It doesn't matter if you're muling dope or just trying to evade a speeding ticket, if the right song comes on the radio, it'll carry you in another world for a moment. In HEART CHECK, Jordan Harper uses Huntsville Prison yard as a microcosm, as a mean to carry his story. It's an important, often overlooked variable in hardboiled literature as it is in the realm of hyperreality. Harper understands this and he makes the difference between the world we know and the world we're afraid of. His use of American folklore creates an amazing, cohesive atmosphere to his stories.
*thunk*
Did you hear this? That's the sound of me, jumping on Jordan Harper's bandwagon. I did not love every story in AMERICAN DEATH SONGS, but those I loved left a deep impression on me. Harper's fiction embodies exactly what I like in American literature. That self-consciousness. That keen observation of the beast, of the territory they live in. AMERICAN DEATH SONGS brought me on the most extreme tour of America you can ask for. Believe the hype, readers. Jordan Harper is the real deal. He's got an original vision and he doesn't turn his head when the going gets tough. An engrossing read.
