Book Review: “Third Rail” by Rory Flynn

I was on a reading tear this past summer. I went through something like six books in four weeks, which, if you knew how slowly I read, you would understand what an unbelievable pace that is for me. And so, without further ado, here is the first of a couple of reviews that I’m going to offer for some of those titles.

The first book that I devoured was called “Third Rail“. Written by Rory Flynn, it tells the story of one Eddy Harkness, a cop in a small town who used to be part of Boston PD’s narcotics intelligence division. After being set up as a fall guy for a crazy fan death that came during the crazier celebrations of the first  World Series Red Sox win in eighty-six years, the best job he could find is being a meter maid in the fictional small town of Nagog. He’s not a happy camper with this and, when he’s not spending his time drinking in bars and romancing twentysomething artists with underworld ties, he’s tying to find a way back to narco-Intel,

Then somebody steals his gun. Or maybe he lost it. In the morning-after haze of a boozy hangover, he can’t really remember what happened. But it looks like it was stolen, especially when somebody starts sending him pictures of it. This kicks off a desperate search by Eddy to find it, while at the same time, he starts looking into a deadly new drug called third rail that’s making people act cuckoo for cocoa puffs before they inevitably die.

The thing that works the best in “Third Rail” is geography. Flynn, a Massachusetts native, has a vice-grip lock on the voice of the region. From the moment the book opens the reader is plunged into the seedy scene of the Boston underworld. Flynn’s spot on here, from language, location, and the Southie “I don’t caah  who the f*ck you think you ahh” attitude.

The book is a study in the economy of words without veering into the iceberg philosophy of writing. Flynn’s tight prose almost dares you to read it. It’s tough and terse, like a character in and of itself growing up in Dorchester.

This is not to say that the book is flawless. The language, used well enough to drive the book forward at an almost propulsive rate, comes with a price. It is written in an increasingly popular style called “third person present tense.” So, instead of reading “he did, he went, he said,” the prose is instead “he does, he goes, he says.” This style movement (I’m not sure what else to call it) makes me bananas. There are few books I’ve read in this style that I’ve enjoyed. Chuck Wendig uses this, and his Miriam Black series works well as a result. Jody Shields used it to her advantage in The Fig Eater.

The book also has an “everything but the kitchen sink” feel. There’s cops, robbers, sex, drugs, rock n roll, mobsters, drugs, corrupt cops, a damsel in distress, a child in distress, and familial twists that leave you thinking “huh”?. If you took all the pieces of some of your favorite hard-boiled detective fiction and put it all into one book, what you’d have is “Third Rail”. There is a moment deep in the book where it teeters on becoming a parody. It skates by, just managing to avoid that, driving past the cliff edge, but just barely.

In the end, though, the books is far more satisfying than annoying, something which many books cannot claim. Another Eddy Harkness book comes out next June. I’ll be checking in with narco-Intel then to see whether Eddie’s first adventure was a one trick pony, or whether Flynn can beat the notorious sophomore slump.