Books: The Devil's Wind

Noir meets neon

By John Ziebell

It takes a lot of words to fill a hefty novel like The Devil's Wind, billed as a neo-noir thriller set largely in 1956 Las Vegas, and author Richard Rayner supplies them well enough. What's also required is that the writer arrange those words into a narrative that catches our interest, keeps us engaged and, perhaps most importantly, tells a credible story. That last bit, actually, is where the book could be a bit more successful than it is.

To be sure, the novel does some things quite well, foremost being the genuine feel of the 1950s that it evokes. This was the postwar ascension of the West, its open spaces bathed in hope and light--and the attendant dark side, gangsters and heroin dealers, normative racism and bomb test fallout the nationalized paranoia of the HUAC probes. Rayner is a fiend for research; his descriptions of Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Palm Springs are rich with detail, from cars and bars and architectural jargon down to innuendo about sexual switch-hitters and guys who "smoked more marijuana than Bob Mitchum." His insights into the Silver State are particularly worthy: a prescient take on the political rift between Nevada's old-school north and the growth-fueled south; Las Vegas glitz in its mob-ruled heyday; a gritty re-creation of the 1950s Westside; and, especially, brief but evocative vignettes that focus on the jazz and musicians of the period.

The novel presents itself as a tale of illicit love--sort of--when protagonist Maurice Valentine meets mysterious seductress Mallory Walker at a party. It becomes, by turn, a mystery, a revenge tragedy and a nefarious insider's confession of political misprision.

"I've always been trying to juggle too many things," Valentine says at one point. That's accurate--he's a world-famous architect, war hero, philanderer, husband and father, mob consort and Nevada's next U.S. senator, even though he lives in Beverly Hills. The greater problem, however, is that the character's quote holds so true for the novel itself.

If not for the wires that hold museum skeletons together, the tyrannosaurus would merely be a heap of undistinguished bones, resembling a large "minor assembly required" toy on Christmas morning. Books depend upon structural connections too. Rayner's plot offers episodic narrative crescendos, like the cliffhangers that close weekly TV melodramas, but in order to surprise us, almost every one sends the story in a new direction. The forced epiphanies become improbable and difficult to link in a logical manner; ex-lovers don't recognize each other, killers have unclear motivation, significant events go unexplained. Narrative shifts that put past actions inexplicably in the present tense don't help, and we find ourselves wondering just how some of the oddly dissonant elements might ever be reconciled.

The works of noir writers as diverse as Raymond Chandler and James Ellroy also take some effort to untangle, but work because they are firmly anchored in the perspectives of unimpeachable characters; no matter what their morality, narrators are true to themselves and as reliable as a set of brass knuckles. What a central figure should not be is uncertain or ingenuous, and Maurice is both. Other characters change personalities and apparent purpose, the backstory they provide is frequently confusing, and information we accept as true is often contradicted. While we don't mind misplacing our trust on occasion, the lack of any concrete touchstones whatsoever makes it hard for the story to win our empathy and interest.

In the end, The Devil's Wind is not really a bad novel; still, we expect fiction that earns its keep to follow some sort of narrative philosophy, no matter how simple, and to rise toward an organic resolution, rather than an ending that materializes through sleight of hand. If you don't let the story get in your way, Rayner's book does offer a fascinating historical retrospective.