Book Review : Joe Clifford - December Boys (2016)
(Out on June 7)
My best (and most sincere) pick up line used to be: "every beautiful girl is unique and I've never seen anybody like you before." It worked because it's true. No matter what your standards are, you can't become the standard if you just want to be or look like anyone else. Joe Clifford created a world of expectations when he announced a sequel to his breakthrough novel Lamentation in 2015. After offering the world something so fresh and powerful, it was a ballsy career move to reopen a quasi-perfect crime opus and risk tainting the memory it left. Let me reassure you, December Boys is pretty awesome. It is as good as Lamentation, if not better.
The events of December Boys pick up a little less than a year after Lamentation. Jay Porter is miserable in his new life and still struggling with his brother Chris' ghost. He unwittingly cracked the biggest case of his career at work and yet feels shitty about handing young Brian Olisky and his mother to a soulless system that's going to swallow him. Jay starts feeling even shittier when he learns the kid has been incarcerated after the police found a joint in the accident car. Guilt and a fleeting sense of purpose will guide Jay into a misguided vigilante investigation on a pattern of insane juvenile convictions that will either break him free of his brother's shadow or end him.
December Boys is a very different novel from Lamentation, yet both novels are complementary to one another. I don't think you can enjoy December Boys as much if you haven't read the first Jay Porter volume. So if Joe Clifford is a new name to you, stop reading here, go do your homework and read Lamentation. You'll thank me later. I've greatly enjoyed the fact that Jay Porter is somewhat of an asshole to the people he loves in December Boys because it's psychologically accurate. Jay is a noble person at heart, but he suffers intense survivor guilt and cannot appreciate the American Dream while it's offering itself to him because he built his entire existence on the fringe of it. But the psychological intensity of December Boys is just one of the aspects that makes it so goddamn enjoyable...
See, it's also very different because of the more straightforward hardboiled mystery plot. It seemed a little mailed-in at the beginning because Joe Clifford throws everything but the kitchen sink at you (also because it's inspired by a true story), but as soon as he finishes to expose the complexity of Jay Porter's relationship to Brian Olisky's fate, December Boys becomes less of a psychological drama and much more of a hardboiled novel. What makes it work beautifully here is the stellar support cast of colorful, yet realistic sounding characters and vivid, original and oddly efficient action scenes. I've compared Lamentation to Dennis Lehane's Mystic River in the past, but December Boyswould be more of a Kenzie/Gennaro novel. More important, it sets up Jay Porter as a Patrick Kenzie-like character.
A novel about a noble amateur sleuth uncovering a conspiracy to imprison teenagers for money might not appear like the most original idea at first glance. December Boys could also be described as follows: lonely and alienated man has to put himself in harm's way in order to make peace with his demons and feel purposeful again. The novel's execution outshines the content. December Boys is sprawling yet oddly intimate, character-driven yet mysterious and involving and psychologically accurate yet not necessarily bound by the need to belong to a particular genre. It is a gorgeous and thoroughly unique novel albeit still slightly influenced by Dennis Lehane's writing. Pre-order your copy now, you won't be disappointed. This Jay Porter thing is the real deal.
BADASS
