Baby, Would I Lie? by Donald E. Westlake (1994}
This one is subtitled "A Romance of the Ozarks," which is a bit of a misnomer. It's a romance about Branson. Missouri...and about country music and its fans...and about corruption stemming from supermarket tabloids...and about a legal system more concerned with winning than with the truth,,,and about fried food...and...
Well, you get the idea. This is one of Westlake's comic crime novels in which he approaches everything with a wide and unerring brush.
Sara Joslyn is a reporter for the New York-based weekly magazine Trend who has been assigned to cover the sensational murder trial of country music star Ray Jones, accused on the flimsiest of evidence of murdering, raping, sodomizing, beating, strangling, and drowning (perhaps not in that order) a female employee of his. Both Sara and her editor (and lover) were former employees of the supermarket tabloid Weekly Galaxy, possibly the most unethical newspaper in the country. The Weekly Galaxy has also sent a phalanx of reporters to Branson, including the Down Under Trio, three Australians who are experts at muddying waters, fabricating facts, and torpedoing their opposition.
The accused comes across as a good ol' boy, but is he? Or is he a calculating showman with his own agenda? The accusers view the trial as a way to generate publicity and are willing to stretch credence to do so. On the morning jury selection was about to start, Ray Jones is accused for a second murder and is dragged off to jail in front of the potential jurors.
Add to the mix a very gullible, part-time local prosecutor, a local judge who is eying an eventual governorship, a smarmy state prosecutor, a slimy IRS agent who is know as "The Prick" and wears his father's ill-fitting clothes, a tabloid editor who hates his life, his wife, and his kids, and an assortment of downhome musicians and locals. The result? A witty, pointed, and somewhat skewed view of both country music and the nation's heartland.
The question remains, is Ray Jones guilty? Perhaps a better question should be, does it matter?
Thoroughly entertaining, as can be expected from Westlake.
Donald E. Westlake (1933-2008) was the author of more than 100 books, and was a three-time Edgar winner, as well as an Mystery Writers of America Grand Master. He used at least nineteen pseudonyms throughout his career, including "Richard Stark," under which he wrote the influential crime series about Parker, a professional thief. His other popular series featured John Dortmunder, a hapless thief. A number of novels about Parker and about Dortmunder were adapted for the screen. Westlake was also a screenwriter and his script for Jim Thompson's The Grifters was nominated for an Academy Award.
A talented and versatile writer who always delivered the goods.
This was the novel sequel to the other WEEKLY GALAXY item TRUST ME ON THIS...and I believe there were two short stories, "Come Again?" and "Spinks", involving the GALAXY staff (there might've been a third, but it's a bleary-eyed morning). Aside from the dig at GALAXY the SF magazine, good work, all.
ReplyDeleteI was surprised in this book that he sets up that the prosecution had been infiltrated by a GALAXY reporter; and that the GALAXY has also bugged the defendants lawyer's office. I'd figured the defense was going show that to the judge to have the case tossed. But Westlake didn't use that at all.
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