In truth, ‘Golden’ strikes chord
In the land of Ben H. Winters’ novel “Golden State,” truth is more important than anything else and lies will get you exiled from civilization.
In other words: Just the facts, man. The engaging detective story, released Tuesday ( ★★★☆; 336 pp.; Mulholland Books) melds elements of noir, cop procedurals, political thrillers and speculative sci-fi to build out the Golden State, a dystopian nation that’s taken the place of what once was California. Cameras surround its populace, capturing every aspect of one’s life and – if that’s not obsessive enough – the residents keep Day Books about conversations, travels and other minutiae to add to the permanent Record and maintain the “Objectively So.”
Keeping everything copacetic is the Speculative Service, a group of men and women who have an almost psychic ability to know even the littlest fib – as in the case of Lazlo Ratesic, having your breakfast ruined by a kid lying to his mom a few tables over in the local diner. Middle-aged lone wolf Laz is one of the best Speculators around and he’s tasked to break in fresh-faced rookie Aysa Paige, a go-getter whose prodigal talents may rival that of Laz’s late older brother Charlie.
The new duo are called in when a roofer falls to his death, a seemingly ordinary accident, but anomalies in the incident send Laz and Aysa on a twisty path dealing with the bureaucratic red tape of Golden State’s honesty-fueled justice system, power players willing to twist reality to further their agenda and sinister dealings that, if outed, could send an entire society into distrust and chaos.
Winters uses a lot of familiar tropes and turns, from the well-tread pairing of the grumpy law-enforcement veteran and an ambitious newbie to an ultimate denouement that undoes a lot of the interesting world-building and timely themes that dazzle in the book’s first two-thirds.
But the real nuance of “Golden State” lie in the author's imaginative details: State-issued reference tomes are an integral part of life “to ensure that we all know the same things,” using idioms and cliches is frowned upon, and people watch each other for entertainment since everybody’s every move is recorded. (Rather than Hulu and Netflix, their streaming options include “Arguments in Restaurants” and “Surprise Proposals.”)
Where the book really shines, though, is in tackling the idea of truth, and if there is such a thing as “absolute” truth, underneath the overarching mystery. Speculators have the ability to “see” different versions of a situation and the mere presence of deception or fakery affects them physically, but Laz truly has his world rocked when he discovers a work of fiction, which shouldn’t exist and is part of the subplot puzzle of how this Golden State even came to be.
At a time in the real world when everybody seems to own their version of the truth and phrases such as “alternative facts” are used to cover falsehoods, “Golden State” is, no lie, a fascinating examination that takes fidelity and correctness down a freaky Orwellian path.