Country: USA
Genre: Hardboiled/Noir
Pages: 208
Writer: Donald E. Westlake is a king of the underground. A rugged, hard-nosed and focused writer, he always stuck to his game and got the dividends of his talent & dedication. He won three Edgar Awards (1968, 1990, 1991) and in 1993, Mystery Writers of America recognized him as a Grand Master. Westlake didn't make as much noise as as the likes of Chandler, Hammett or even Ellroy, but he was always there. He gave his contribution to the hardboiled novel. He wrote the screenplay for "The Grifters" in 1990.
STORYLINE:
361 is the story of Ray Kelly, a U.S Army Veteran, stationed in Germany for three years, coming back to the country. Ray doesn't have anything in the world but his father Willard and his older brother Bill. The day of his return, as his father picked him up, somebody shoots his father. In a few seconds, Ray has an apocalyptic vision of his father, agonizing and spitting blood, then himself goes pitch black.
Ray wakes up two months later in hospital with his father dead and blind from one eye. Suddenly, his life takes a turn for worse, but is given meaning. Ray feels the need to give his father (a lawyer) the justice he deserves. That's just the beginning of the downwards spiral. Soon, Bill's wife Anna also dies mysteriously. The Kelly brothers trace back their woes to the upcoming liberation of a prisoner named Eddie Kapp.
VOICE:
It's my first Westlake novel, so I won't lay a definite judgement, but the main interest of 361 for me was the style it was written in. True to the tradition of hardboiled fiction, Westlake keeps is extremely simple. Short sentences with first person point of view, with occasional wisecracks here and there.
361 is so bare, so raw that there is an undeniable charm to it. The scenes are crystal clear, visual. There could be a movie made from this novel and it wouldn't be hard to do a good one. In many ways, the structure of 361 is similar to a screenplay. A series of meticulously planned stand alone scenes.
CHARACTERS:
There's little to no innovation in the characters of 361. Ray Kelly is an interesting war veteran hell-bent on revenge and Westlake succeeds in giving him haunting visions and great resolve. His output on life is a little flat and straightforward though. You'll have hard time to root for him. He's not going to win you over the way a Phillip Marlowe or a Patrick Kenzie would. That's probably why they got serials and Kelly didn't.
The supporting crew proves itself to be deeper. The antagonists are original and don't spill the mystery. It's a capital point to Hardboiled/Noir that the characters don't give the plot away and Westlake's baddies do just that. Willie Cheever, Ed Ganolese and the rest of the crew (not spoiling anything here) are making a good work to obfuscate the truth and give Ray a hard time.
INTEREST:
Remember my notes on noir? 361 is at the heart of the problem I'm talking about. It's playing with so much rules and constraints that it feels like it's been read a thousand times before. It's an early novel from Westlake and seemingly, a warm up for what was going to come.
A novel is an effective way to be entertained for cheap during many hours and 361 gets your attention, but doesn't haunt you to the point of having to read it all over again like many Noir novels do. There are better revenge stories. Ones with plot twists that aren't taken from the Charles Dickens playbook.
