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Someone once thought it would be a great idea to put everything into two ideological categories: good and evil, right and wrong, chaos and order, no matter how you put it, everybody does it because it's easy and it's soothing. It gives you the illusion of control. That philosophical dichotomy that leads the lives of so many of us like a lighthouse in a cosmic storm is at the center Marc E. Fitch's lyrical and brooding detective novel Paradise Burns, an inspired but little known hardboiled thriller with horror influences I was lucky enough to stumble upon.
Rudy Patchiss is an ex-cop turned private detective after marrying a younger victim he rescued from a terrible fate. After failing to find young Georgia Wills alive, he is almost immediately mandated to find another young girl from upstate named Jennifer Acres. Patchiss' latest assignment was going to college in Parlor City when she mysteriously dropped out and vanished soon after. Her parents receive letters from her every couple weeks insisting everything is fine, but the lack of contact with their daughter prompts them to hire Rudy Patchiss in order to shed light on the mystery that swallowed their lives.
There's not much I can tell you about Paradise Burns without spoiling anything, but it's a detective novel that daringly challenges the boundaries of its own genre despite its rather classic form. It has noticeable Southern Gothic and Cosmic Horror influences, which enhance the classic first person narration of the traditional detective novel. Marc E. Fitch has a very lyrical style that will remind you of Dennis Lehane and James Lee Burke. Paradise Burns also reminded me of French produced video game Heavy Rain for its melancholic tone and its tendency to sink into melodrama is short and controlled bursts.
My favorite aspect of Paradise Burns definitely was Marc E. Fitch's keen eye for clever and lifelike details:
Behind them, past the stacks of empty beer cases and dumpsters, was a locked iron gate leading to the road. Rudy looked back and could see the rain spattering off the pavement. He listened to the voices on the patio and hear them snorting the dope, but mostly felt David's breathing and movement, waiting for a sign that he would struggle or scream. The rain came harder now. The men on the patio were taking bumps of blow and didn't seem to care. Rudy thought he could possibly move with the sound of the storm. He pulled David's head back, whispering in his ear, "We're going to move backward past the dumpster and to the street, you understand?" David nodded. "I don't want to hurt you so don't do anything dumb." He nodded again.
That scene is a good example of Fitch's patient, detail-oriented approach to his craft.The use of the rain was particularly stunning here. He uses the word "spattering" in the first allusion, which lead me to see it as a critical part of the scene not because of the water, but because of the sound. Fitch confirms it in the middle of the scene by saying the rain falls harder and harder. The tone was set for the entire novel right there. I know I've compared Marc E. Fitch to Lehane and Burke and I don't mean he necessarily has the poise of the two veteran best sellers yet but he sure has the ambition and the artistic vision to become a middle ground between both, at least lyrically speaking.
It is a documented fact that I almost never turn down a detective novel and this obsession hasn't always served me well. I was pretty happy about Paradise Burns though, which is a bold, ambitious, unselfish and oh-so-contemporary book. It gets carried away with its own dramatic weight at times, sure, but it never loses sight of the big picture and it delivers an effective private detective grind in an original and unique manner. Don't let Paradise Burns fly under your radar. Not if you're a detective novel reader. Not if you've been looking for reading suggestions lately. Not for anything. It's fun, dynamic read that amounts to much more than the sum of its parts.
