Usually when someone contacts me via email about reading their book, they give me a description of it and I say sure, send it, or no that’s not for me. And usually, if the description includes a phrase like “gangster noir epic set a thousand years into the future.” I’ll pass because, well, that’s just not for me, in most cases. Usually, the name on the book is not James Boice. I said it once, when I reviewed NoVA, and I’ll repeat it here: I don’t know why this guy doesn’t get more attention.
The Good and the Ghastly is as described in that email. Set in 3348, after the war and the nuclear destruction, after 1000 years of crawling back to a time that reflects our own. Bits of ancient history seep through the years – the great leaders and artists who stand tall throughout the centuries – Alexander the Great, Bob Dylan, Sarah Palin. Thank god Visa is there to hold everything together.
Junior Alvarez grows up in the fractured gangland of Visa NoVA with a God complex, a bad temper, and a will to act violently and decisively against his foes. In a massive teenage gangfight, he beats a boy to death, and the boy’s mother starts a never-ending campaign against Junior – first through legal means, and the via a systematic vigilante attack on the gang system.
Junior is the real story here, though. He rises from an anger-fueled street thug, unwelcome (frustratingly so for JR) through the front door of the highest establishments, to a meticulously organized lieutenant masquerading as a community benefactor, to mob boss, sometimes through deception and sometimes through violence. It’s a rise familiar to the modern reader or filmgoer – think The Departed, or Heat, or Billy Bathgate with something of a steampunk sensiblity.
Junior is a great character. He’s despicable from a young age, seducing minors and busting heads. He believes he is destined for greatness and the shame he feels at his back-door status is palpable and the motivation for the swath of violence he unleashes.
Whereas NoVA was reserved and pointed, viewing suburbia from multiple angles, The Good and the Ghastly is a detached view of a killer, with all his charms and warts, building an empire and chased Javert-like by feds and vigilantes.
James Boice is as good as ever here. He doesn’t let the dystopian satire get in the way of the story, relieving me of one of my personal annoyances. He’s gritty and reflective, twistedly funny, and his sentences are as sharp as ever. A fearless, unrepentant book of a fearsome future – The Good and the Ghastly will be released by Scribner on 6/14/11.
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