After his smart mouth inadvertently lands him in hot water, Detective Jules Bettinger finds himself and his family exiled from the warmth of Arizona to the frozen wasteland of Victory, Missouri - a charming place littered with pigeon bones, dead cats nailed to posts and faeces-covered signs. His first case? A serial necrophiliac. But before he can kick himself into oblivion for fucking his career up so badly, a war between the gangsters who run the town and the shady police, hardly much better themselves, is about to erupt. And then the cop executions begin. Mean business indeed… !
I’m not a huge fan of crime fiction as I find the stories too contrived, limited and formulaic while the writing tends to be bland and dull (police procedurals – ugh!). S. Craig Zahler’s Mean Business on North Ganson Street though is different for its lively, unique prose style that lends the story an unexpected, but not unwelcome, playful tone. It’s also the novel’s downfall.
Zahler is an extremely verbose writer deeply in love with his extended vocabulary and eager to constantly show it off. This makes for a very plodding pace to what should be a zippier read given the exciting subject matter. There were so many scenes that, after I finished them, I wondered “What the hell was the point of going through all of that?”.
Without going into specifics that might spoilerize, Zahler can’t ever leave anything to the reader’s imagination – everything has to be described in excruciating detail. He can’t say that the character went to the place and then pick up the story at that place; no, we have to read about the drive over there where nothing really happens!
Then, scenes between characters that you’d take as read – ie. one character telling another, “I’ma git them for this!” etc. – are similarly pointlessly written up. We can’t have characters say they’ll go somewhere and then show up there, or say they’ll pick up something and just deal with it in a sentence, we have to see them do everything in extensive detail and it becomes so wearisome to read! Maybe he thought he was building tension by taking this approach but I just found it frustrating. This modestly-sized 300 page novel would’ve been so much better at 200 pages or less.
I also wasn’t taken with the main character, Bettinger, who was a rather bland good guy. He’s good at his job, he has a loving family – yawn. I just found him such a boring person to spend any time with. The villain was underwhelming too and, given that he was off-page for nearly the entire book, the showdown with him at the end felt rushed and slightly anti-climactic.
But there were many parts I enjoyed. The scenes without Bettinger were cracking, particularly once the cop executions begin. I liked the Victory police, a hard-boiled murderers’ row of crazy anti-heroes fighting for a semblance of justice in hell on earth and who you’re never quite sure to root for or not. Bettinger’s partner Dominic was very memorable, as was their boss, the boxing-mad larger-than-life Inspector Zwolinski, and the dialogue throughout was near-as-dammit perfect, always giving the reader a strong idea of the characters.
Mean Business on North Ganson Street is an extremely violent and graphic genre novel that suffers from overwriting and pacing issues. But it’s also unique for Zahler’s style with enough compelling material in the characters and story to keep from becoming a bore. Given how good his movies are – Bone Tomahawk and Brawl in Cell Block 99, both of which I’d highly recommend if you’ve not seen them – I’d hoped this would be as high quality but it seems that the movies are so good because of the 2 hour run times. Take those constraints away and Zahler’s otherwise enthralling storytelling becomes sprawling, to its detriment. Mean Business isn’t a bad read but I’d caution anyone expecting the same level of awesome as his movies.
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