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"I saw."
"I'm not blowing him, okay?"
"Never say never."
I've never been to Arizona. Sometimes I wish I was there, like in the dead of the Canadian winter for example. I swore to myself I would visit and spend a couple weeks down there at least once in my life, though. I like to travel, but I'm not the kind of reader who's seeking a tourism experience when reading. There's a subtle difference in between in a place and between from a place that eludes to most authors, but it doesn't get by old school pulpster Garnett Elliott. His short story collection SCORCHED NOIR, published by Beat to a Pulp earlier this summer, is a blend of underworld violence, regional folklore and mysticism that's as close as I've ever got from having a true Arizonian experience.
There are eight short stories in SCORCHED NOIR. My favorites were TRAILER DE FUEGO, BAD NIGHT AT BURNING ROCK and THE GREATEST GENERATION, although there weren't any bad stories in the collection but no emotionally transcendent ones either. Control and clarity of purpose are Garnett Elliott's calling cards. He understands well who he is as a writer and what he wants to communicate through his stories. There's a definite blue collar charm to his prose as he never trips into what Chuck Palahniuk calls the ''big voice'' and never gets in the way of the story he's trying to tell. It might seem obvious if you've never written or if you don't read as much as I do, but few writers display the technical mastery of the storytelling basics like Garnett Elliott.
The most wickedly boring thing about new crime fiction that I can think about is the lack of a proper identity, the aping of the old guard. There's a good chance you're not as good as Richard Stark at writing career criminals and there's an even better chance I might pick up his old books before I bother with a sloppy homage, you know? Garnett Elliott's fiction is traditional hardboiled, but it has the contemporary angle necessary to carry his vision. His character live on the fringe of society in each their own way and slip into the underworld trying to improve things for themselves. Not only his characters are believable, but they are relatable, too. They live tormented lives that could only exist in Garnett Elliott's fiction, but their thought process, feelings and their decisions echo those of the readers. Elliott's stories have a strong regional flavor, yet the characters have a universal and very contemporary appeal.
Short story collections need a cohesive angle in order to be of any interest to readers and SCORCHED NOIR's panorama of the Arizonian experience from the quiet despair of the working class grind to the drug-fueled mysticism of the desert did it for me. Garnett Elliott even has a recurring character that helps tying the stories and landscapes together. I always question small presses' decisions when they release short story anthologies and collections, but I should've known better than to second guess Beat to a Pulp, who's quality standards are way above the demands of the market. I was only loosely familiar with the work of Garnett Elliott before reading SCORCHED NOIR and force is to admit that it's a swift introduction to both the author and what Beat to a Pulp has been doing so well for all these years.