Family feud
Two brothers’ contentious relationship drives an engaging crime noir story set in 1973 East Texas
An older genteel fellow named Xavier Bell hires private investigator Tom Phelan of Beaumont, Texas, to locate his brother, Rodney.
The hunt for Rodney — and the reason Xavier wants him found — is the principal storyline in this scintillating crime noir set in 1973, and it reveals aliases the brothers are living under. Eventually, their real surname is dug up — Sparrow; hence the book’s title, “The Bird Boys.”
The brothers’ relationship, it turns out, has been far from cordial. It has involved the death of their younger sister decades before and Xavier’s epileptic son Rodney currently cares for.
Beyond this story, Santa Fe author Lisa Sandlin stirs a gumbo of flavorful subplots and digressions twining Phelan and Delpha Wade.
Wade is his efficient secretary, helper, tough cookie, ex-con and, late in the novel, a possible romantic interest.
In one subplot with several enticing supporting characters, Phelan is hired by a woman who wants to learn what nocturnal, and apparently illegal, activity her handsome husband is up to. She doesn’t want him arrested, just brought home. Authorities are welcome to corral the other bad guys in the enterprise and whatever contraband they can intercept.
Wade herself gets a lot of attention, and deservedly. She’s a tough cookie. Witness Wade, alone in Phelan’s office, wounded by a knife-wielding intruder/child murderer; she kills him with a broken liquor bottle. In a long scene in which Wade is taken to the police station for questioning, Phelan and a lawyer are her backups; incidentally, Phelan is the police chief’s nephew.
One conversation in this scene brings out the Cajun-influenced speech of police Sgt. Fontenot. “Not makin’ an argue wit’ you,” he tells Phelan, “But ’low me to remind you that anybody get dead, we got forms to fill out. Set your behind in a chair, you.”
Police are familiar with Wade’s history. Months earlier, she was released from prison after serving 14 years for killing a man who had raped her. Yes, she was imprisoned.
Other short diversions refer to current events — the Watergate hearings and Atlanta Braves star Hank Aaron closing in on Babe Ruth’s home-run record. Phelan likes the Braves, not the nearby Astros.
Sandlin effectively and cleverly inserts descriptive single sentences — “His smile was so loose it almost fell off his face” — or whole paragraphs — “In between the stout trunks of loblollies, whose evergreen branches began higher up, stood a lot-sized, haphazard forest of spruces and junipers, a few dogwood and redbud, a raggledy magnolia.”
Sandlin knows Beaumont. She grew up in the East Texas city and thinks it’s an ideal setting for crime noir, with its area oil refineries and prisons.
“The Bird Boys” is the second of a planned quartet in Sandlin’s Delpha Wade and Tom Phelan Mystery series. It was nominated for an Edgar in the Paperback Original category and was named a New York Times Best Crime Novel of 2019. Sandlin’s first novel, “The DoRight,” set in the spring of 1973, won the 2015 Hammett Prize from the International Association of Crime Writers.
Volume 3, scheduled for release in 2021, is called “The People Store.”
“I’ve read a lot of noir,” Sandlin said in a phone interview. “I’ve read all of (Dashiell) Hammett’s books. I really enjoy how he kills everyone so differently. Each has this different choreography when they die.” She’s also read Raymond Chandler, Walter Mosley and Barbara Neely, who died in March.
Sandlin is a professor emeritus from
The Writer’s Workshop, University of Nebraska-Omaha.