“You can’t fight gravity.”
This has become one of my favorite lines in hardboiled fiction. Up there with Eddie Coyle’s monologue about his double set of knuckles and the source of A Drink Before The War’s title, it’s spoken to a gut shot victim in The Wolves of Fairmount Park – the latest from Dennis Tafoya, who in just two books is proving to be a major contender in crime fiction. He uses all of its gritty standards, taking it past standard genre fiction. Much like that line the emotion of his books linger after the immediate impact.
His debut book, The Dope Thief, about a career criminal in his mid-thirties that wants to quit, but learns you can’t just walk away, earned respect from crime fiction greats like Ice Harvest’s Scott Phillips. While the action was hard and realistic, it demonstrated Tafoya’s unbelievable skill with tone and character. He captured the mundane desperation of criminal and working class life without being drab in style. He has enough faith in his characters to push the story and uncover its themes with little author intrusion. His characters breathe with humor, pathos, as well as virtues and vices that combat one another.
In Wolves of Fairmount Park, Tafoya balances the intimate and epic. He uses the shooting of two middle class teens- one a cop’s son- in front of a crack house to show how many lives are affected by a single act of violence. We get several points of view on the crime: the hookers who witnessed it, the drug dealers implicated, the investigating detectives who are uncovering facts they don’t like, and the surviving loved ones with not enough answers and too much pain and anger. The main focuses of the microcosm are the cop father, Brendan Donovan, and Orlando, his junkie brother who may have a couple of clues to what happened. Both are estranged, but carry guilt along with practical certainty of their relationship. Orlando, who becomes a suspect in the crime, starts looking into it as a way out with a possible shot of redemption.
It’s those notes of redemption that differentiate him from many others in the field. It’s easy to deliver cynicism and downward spirals in hardboiled fiction. Many of Tafoya’s characters reflect that, but not in overall story. Possibly the strongest of his many gifts is portraying realistic hope and grace. It’s hard won and incremental, yet it’s there for the willing. With Dennis Tafoya, you might not be able to fight gravity, but you might have some choice in where you land.
On Saturday, June 26th at 3PM, Dennis Tafoya will be conducting a free writer’s workshop, using his influences as well as Wolves of Fairmount Park as examples. I’ve had the pleasure of spending time with Dennis at Bouchercon last year. He’s smart, funny, and can explain what he does in an engaging manner. So bring pen, paper, and spend the afternoon with us at BookPeople.
–Scott Montgomery
BookPeople 