WHEN A BAD MAN IS THE GOOD GUY
Readers will forgive the many faults of journalist’s charming anti-hero
Phillip Scarnum is a likable 40-year-old hero, although not exactly a role model for your kids. He’s a rugged, freewheeling sailor in Chester, N.S., who drinks too much, dabbles in illicit drugs, beds more ladies than James Bond and enjoys tormenting the bad guys — or, should we say, the guys badder than him.
Actually, Scarnum is the male equivalent of the hooker with a heart of gold: His rather dubious morals include being kind to widows and orphans and a willingness to risk his life for a friend. But don’t let him near your coke, nor your wife.
Scarnum is the central character in Stephen Maher’s new, fast-paced, thoroughly enjoyable novel, Salvage. Maher is an Ottawa-based Nova Scotian and former Parliament Hill columnist for Postmedia.
Political journalists usually have only one of two qualities: They either shine for their investigative acumen or for crafting riveting, analytical prose. Maher is unusual in that he knows how to pull the bad guys out of the shadows and to do it with literary aplomb. Those two qualities surely helped Maher write Salvage, his second novel, the first being a much-praised political thriller (and Parliament Hill satire) called Deadline.
In Salvage, Scarnum happens one night upon an abandoned boat, the Kelly Lynn, hung up on some rocks off the South Shore of Nova Scotia.
He frees the boat, tows it to shore and claims a salvage fee.
But before he can receive his fat cheque, he becomes implicated in the death of the salvaged boat’s skipper, Jimmy Zinck.
Meanwhile, some murderous Mexican banditos are demanding he turn over a huge stash of cocaine they claim was hidden in Zinck’s boat.
The Mounties just want to put Scarnum in jail. The Mexicans are more bloody-minded. They delight in explaining in horrifying detail exactly what they plan to do with Scarnum to make him reveal where the cocaine is hidden. Let’s just say his romantic life would never be the same.
Luckily, Scarnum has some friends, including Angela, the on-again, off-again widowed partner of Jimmy Zinck.
Angela is another of those prostitute-with-a-heart-of-gold characters, except she doesn’t charge. It’s all free.
When we meet Angela, she is pregnant, but is unsure if Zinck or Scarnum is the father. Or there is a third possibility. Angela was not just two-timing her partner. She was also involved with a man who just happens to be the partner of the woman Scarnum loved, lost and still secretly loves. She loves him too. Of course, they have secret sex.
Chester, N.S., it seems, is a hotbed of adulterers and wifeswappers, not to mention coke snorters, crooked businessmen, Mexican drug lords, machine guns and corpses floating in the ocean. One suspects the real Chester is somewhat more tranquil, although the community is known as a home for the rich and, as we all know, the rich live very different lives than the rest of us.
This is not to say that Salvage is unbelievable.
At least the plot and characters are no more unbelievable than the plot and characters in your average American cop show on television.
As a book, Salvage soars above the average paperback thriller, despite some flaws.
The male characters are cleverly drawn, but the female char- acters are the kind of cardboard airheads better suited to a 1940s gangster movie.
There is one exception, Constable Leger, a no-nonsense Mountie determined to get her man behind bars.
The dialogue usually rings true, yet Scarnum’s Newfoundland accent seems to drift in and out, depending upon his (or maybe the author’s) mood.
The plot constantly races, pausing only periodically for some eyeball-rolling sex.
The book never takes itself too seriously. The author’s sense of humour is always poking through, even when good guys and bad guys are torturing each other in the most painful of ways.
Salvage is not a literary masterpiece.
University students will not be writing theses on this novel. The book is, however, exciting, entertaining and a lot of fun. Read it in a hammock while resting in the backyard this summer. Or read it on the beach. But do read it.
Meanwhile, Maher has been hunting for a new journalism job in Ottawa and is writing a third novel he describes as “a psychological social media thriller set mostly in New York.”
Maher says fiction writing “is really exciting,” but can also be “lonesome.” Journalism, on the other hand, offers “quick reward” and “social interaction.”
The author’s sense of humour is always poking through, even when good guys and bad guys are torturing each other.