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My name is Richard Dean Buckner. People call me Richard or Mr. Buckner. No one calls me Dick. No one.
The detective novel is a genre in dire need of being reinvented. Its originality got hurled out of the window somehwere between Raymond Chandler and Lawrence Block (arguably the last great P.I novelist). Where do you go from there? May I suggest you pick up a copy of Ryan Sayles' THE SUBTLE ART OF BRUTALITY and start drawing up a model of what the new private eye should be? On top of being the best novel I read in a couple of months, THE SUBTLE ART OF BRUTALITY is clever, funny, atmospheric and quite original for what it is. Ryan Sayles is not just another middle-aged madman, roaming on the internet. Dude's got game.
Richard Dean Buckner is what happens when you take Matthew Scudder, Raylan Givens and Batman and make them one character. He is a man too brutal to be a cop, yet too human to be a criminal. A man named Elam Derne is his latest client. He is looking for his wayward stepdaughter Delilah, who vanished a few weeks after he evicted he from the house he has bought for her. The man we call RDB unravels a story seemingly bigger than an adult woman's disappearance, as she was in bed with half the scumbags of St-Ansgar and she didn't leave any of them with good memories. RDB has to figure out which one is lying to him and where the hell is Delilah.
Unlike for most detective novels, Richard Dean Buckner is, by far, the most interesting character in THE SUBTLE ART OF BRUTALITY. He is a phenomenal character period. Ryan Sayles understands how someone with an absolute lack of fear thinks, speaks and acts, which makes RDB a pleasure whenever he opens his mouth to talk smack. Sayles understands also how his development is crucial to the novel and indulges the reader with several memories, some sort of RDB's Greatest Hits that boths makes the charater deeper and heightens the entertainment factor. Long gone is the observing, distant and wisecracking P.I in Sayles' world. RDB is as hands-on as you'll ever get.
I installed a light outside my office door for one reason : security. There is a panel of frosted glass in my door, shoulder height. The light limns anyone who shows up knocking, and the glass frames their heads in case I answer the door with a gunshot. It's been known to happen.
Whenever RDB takes the backseat and slips into the Scudder observer's part, THE SUBTLE ART OF BRUTALITY reveals its weakness. The support cast is not that interesting : scorned parents, scumbags and morose cops. They all need RDB to live, to drag the best out of them. But he does, and not wanting to write a one-dimensional novel, Ryan Sayles also paid great attention to his pacing, to give his ending the desired effect. THE SUBTLE ART OF BRUTALITY is deliberately slow, but its ending is so rewarding, unexpected and beautiful (beautiful is unexpected in a gritty P.I story, right?) that it puts the slow pacing in perspective. Endings disappoint me 99% of the time, but it didn't here.
I should know better than to ask for a sequel to anything, really, but Richard Dean Buckner left me wanting more. He is a breath of fresh air in an antiques shop. A biker in a museum. A chaotic, reckless anomaly. You know I'm enjoying something when I deliberately slow down my reading pace to enjoy the novel longer. THE SUBTLE ART OF BRUTALITY is a ridiculously strong first novel, starrting the new darling of the P.I novels legacy. Get acquainted with RDB, folks. He's another diamond Snubnose Press found on the side of the road.
BADASS
