The Man, the Modulars, the Mystery
A review of Robert J Ray’s
Murdock Tackles Taos
Invisible to all but the most astute reader, yet tools of the trade
to the writer, modular scenes are the core of the mystery novel. Modular
scenes are those universal elements every mystery has or it’s not a
mystery. To name a few:
Crime Scene
Sleuth on Stage
Victim
Killer on Stage
First encounter—Victim and Killer
First encounter—Killer and Sleuth
Object links
Victim’s lair
Killer’s lair
Return to the crime scene
Killer confrontation.
Modular scenes are frames that contain the story. In the hands of an
amateur, the modulars are clunky and obvious. In the hands of a master,
such as Robert J. Ray, the modular frame dissolves leaving character,
action, image, lust and desire.
Every Murdock mystery has two defining characteristics:
Good writing and control of the elements.
Good Writing: Buried in the action sequences in this novel
there are, for example, subtle techniques of language that harken back
to the rhetorical past:
“He drove a Humvee. Humvees smelled of money, money in her life was like manna, manna made her thighs quiver.”
In sentences such as this, Ray pays homage to Aristotle and the Trivium all in the context of a 21
st
Century detective novel…which, by the way, I believe Mr. Ray is in the
process of reinventing by sticking with tradition while bringing a 21
st
Century social conscience to the genre. The writing in this novel is,
in a word, stupendous. Crafted, controlled, wild and crazy when needed,
the words create a world in which the rich eat the poor.
Control of the Elements: Ray defines character in just a few words but he gives us everything—whether we know it or not:
The Victim: “She wore hiking shorts with those bulbous pockets.
Her skin, even in death, looked white and smooth, with a patina of
sunburn starting. It was hard to estimate the height and weight of a
corpse, but she was perhaps five feet five, weight around one-fifty. Her
feet were bare, white, and scabby with blood. One green flip flop lay
in the dirt beside her left foot.”
The key to the entire mystery in
Murdock Tackles Taos is one phrase:
weight around one-fifty.
You’ll have to read the novel to see why. As you read you will see that
the mystery wraps itself up in that phrase which has, by the way, many
transformations, all of which add up to the final revelation that will
shock, enthrall, thrill, and at the same time challenge your belief in
the goodness of human beings.
Object link: “Helene leaned on him as she framed the corpse in
the view window of her camera. A soft click, her throat contracting.
Then a quick shot of the downed bow-hunters. Without the man’s hand on
her arm, without him to lean against, she would have fallen. As they
started down the hill, her hip bumping his, she still didn’t know his
name.”
As with all good mysteries, objects become characters as they move through the story.
The Maltese Falcon is nothing without the Black Bird.
The Big Sleep hinges on a photograph of little sister Carmen. In
Murdock Tackles Taos, that camera, an object of small consequence at the beginning, lives on what Mr. Ray calls “
a plot track.”
The camera grows in importance as Ray unveils the mystery until, at one
point, you ask yourself—Why didn’t I see that. Again, in mystery
writing, the writer knows what the reader finds out, and Mr. Ray knows
more than just a little bit about the craft.
I won’t tell you the story here—for that you’ll want to read the
novel, and I won’t tell you who the killer is, but when you make that
first encounter you might want to bring a towel to your reading to wipe
off the slime.
This is a good mystery, maybe Mr. Ray’s finest although I understand
that there is another in the works so will have to withhold judgment.
