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April 3
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The Day the Music Died
by Ed Gorman
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Reviewed by Jean Porath
Not long ago the distinction between a well-told story and a
good-story-well-told was debated on a planet in a distant galaxy. The aliens
decided they'd rather read the latter. Problem is, when they landed on Earth
they found shelves full of well-told stories by writers who set the props and
people in all the right places, but none helped to illuminate much about
earthlings' lives. Then the aliens chanced upon the first in a new series by
Ed Gorman (they've seen his name before) and were gladdened. And since they
had yet to master traveling through time, they were doubly glad. In Gorman's
good-story-told-well, it's 1959, the door into the sixties, and he's created
an approachable and sympathetic narrator for aliens, and earthlings, to
journey alongside.
Sam McCain is a lawyer. But that's secondary. He's also a private
investigator who works for Judge Esme Anne Whitney, of the important Whitneys
in small town Iowa. McCain and Whitney have a tricky relationship. The judge
likes to use McCain as the target of her hobby: shooting rubber bands. Her
latest directive is for McCain to prove her nephew Kenny did not shoot his
wife before taking his own life. McCain senses Kenny didn't do it, and the
judge insists he prove it before the family name gets dragged around town.
What gets dragged around, though, and into a canoe, is the body of a young
girl, clearly dead from a botched abortion, and McCain feels she may be
connected to his case.
The novel is a mystery. But that's secondary. Or maybe not. It's a formula
mystery, clear cut, well paced, with several suspects, intriguing characters
and subplots that all converge and lead to a logical, surprising, and
slightly sad (in the big picture sense) conclusion. Yet it's a mystery that
breaks the bonds and compels the reader to care about characters. Perhaps
this is because Gorman does three things incredibly well.
He has an uncanny ability to describe a character in a few succinct
sentences. In one line he exposes a character's entire life and personality.
McCain describes a man his same age, but lets the reader know how much older
the man seems by observing, "This kind of aging didn't just happen; you had
to go out and earn it." Gorman also effectively evokes life in a small town,
capturing its idiosyncrasies. In a conversation between McCain and another
character, neither states who they are talking about, and McCain notes, "That
was the nice thing about a small city. You didn't have to worry about your
pronouns." Gorman also creates, aside from the small town, a believable
historical setting, and does so subtly and slowly. He drops in the name of a
cigarette, a car, a promising presidential hopeful. He refers to the still
close proximity of WWII and its effects, the possibilities presented by
Sputnik. He muses that an older character looks like Lauren Bacall may look
someday, when she gets older. With the mix of interesting characters and
strong evocation of time and place, Gorman does what the film Pleasantville
did, supposes that current times are bad, whisks us back to "simpler" days,
then subliminally asks, Was life really better back then? In the novel,
racism is rampant, people huff and puff on cigarettes, abortions are
performed illegally, at great risk, and most women are secretaries and
waitresses and not much more.
The title refers to the day Buddy Holly was killed, thus music fills the
background. In the first few pages McCain is driving home from a rock-n-roll
event, the girl he loves (who doesn't love him) beside him. With a
three-and-a-half hour drive ahead of them, McCain needs all the rock-n-roll
he can find. The Day the Music Died is about that, a three-and-a-half hour
drive that sails along like McCain's ride home, full of great tunes. The
aliens agree, it's a good-story-well-told.
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