PI Jack Prine returns in ‘East of Texas, West ofHell’
Devilish characters fill pages of Southern-fried thriller
The title alone of Rod Davis’ new novel is enough to set us to thinking about what dark corners of the South we will enter. What intricate webs hanging thickly and intractably in the seediest underbelly of underbellies will ensnare us this time?
“East of Texas, West of Hell” — like “South, America,” the previous novel by former San Antonio Express-News travel editor Davis — takes us on the road with Jack Prine, the ex-Dallas TV anchor with a penchant for femmes fatale, as he descends into a netherworld of criminality and something even worse than the concerns of lowlifes and troublemakers.
This time there are more nefarious thugs to run toward and away from.
Prine has been living in the Big Easy, safe at last from the hijinks of his debut adventure, when he is quickly thrust back into danger.
Elle Meridian needs his help. Her daughter, Rose, is missing, and because she is probably in with some pretty bad company, Jack is about the only person she believes can help her. He is someone who straddles many worlds. Is he closer to a cop or criminal? Is he more saint than sinner? Will he be able to return the girl to her mother or further alienate himself from this enigmatic woman with whom he’s had a romantic past — and still has simmering romantic feelings?
The odyssey takes him from New Orleans to stops in Georgia. From Atlanta, he goes to Savannah and then to South Carolina. He stops at last in Texas, including in Dallas.
With very little to go on, Jack starts to chip away at the lock on a Pandora’s box that would be better left hermetically sealed for an eternity.
He has an Atlanta address that might help him locate Rose, but all he finds there are two corpses. Among information about meth dealers and human trafficking, he learns that Rose has been involved in criminal activities. The search for her becomes more difficult when he finds out she is living under an assumed name.
Along the way, he encounters the expected drug dealers, sure, but also trails of violence and death he hadn’t banked on. But once in, there is no turning back, never mind the tranquilizer dart that fells Jack and leaves him vulnerable to murderous neoNazis.
There are many scenes of brutal savagery, including a victimized waitress stabbed in the eye, limbless torsos, mounted human skeletons and more.
To balance this, we find a Jack Prine who isn’t just shooting from the hip, literally and figuratively, to get out of any of a number of snares. We also encounter a pensive, introspective and remorseful man who shares his backstory of a broken family and the heart-rending loss that might explain his daredevil heroics.
Perhaps he has nothing left to lose. But that would not explain the artful ways he continues to dodge the exceptionally diabolical cast of characters in this novel.
The worst of the bunch is Topper, a white supremacist who emerges as the novel’s arch-rival. To flush out the evil he orchestrates, Jack has to get his own hands dirty.
It is a compromise he is forced into — to play the game by Topper’s rules.
“Noir” begins to describe this thrill-a-minute tale, but Jack is not a flat or predictable character — and neither is anyone else in the book.
Elle’s initial entreaties for help are always at the front of Jack’s mind, and he finds her appeals irresistible. It is hard for him to say no to her, given their past and the profound ways they have bonded.
However, the drug dealers, sex traffickers and mafiosi he encounters move Jack into a very different kind of moral ambiguity. As Jack attempts to save Rose, he falls further and further down the precipice where the difference between right and wrong is murkier and murkier.
Whom can Jack trust? He begins to feel that he cannot even trust himself and has no way to justify the actions he must take just to survive.
Readers who enjoyed Davis’ “South, America” will fall into this sequel and find more than just vicarious thrills. “East of Texas, West of Hell” brings into focus the bigger questions of righteousness found on the roads leading out of perdition.