Mon 5 Dec 2011
Reviewed by Richard & Karen La Porte: WILLIAM CAMPBELL GAULT – The Chicano War.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[3] Comments
WILLIAM CAMPBELL GAULT – The Chicano War. Walker, hardcover, 1986. No paperback edition.
Brock Callahan, retired pro football star and private eye, takes in eleven year old Juan Chavez, who has run away from St. Mary’s foundling home. What Brock doesn’t guess is that he is also taking in a big piece of the gang/race war that is a hidden river of evil running under the peaceful streets of San Valdesto, a sun-warmed affluent “somewhat” north of Los Angeles.
Juan has a brother named Pete who is a skilled auto mechanic and who has disappeared. Chris Andropolus, the hoodlum who is trying to make San Valdes his private turf, opens a firebombing and shooting battle against the Brotherhood, who are a group of respectable Chicanos.
This battle culminates in the death of Andropolus and the arrest of Ricardo Cortez, a leader of the Brotherhood. The missing brother Pete is embroiled in an auto chopping operation run by one of Andropolus’s hired guns in the unincorporated and largely Chicano suburb north of San Valdesto.
Hatred grows and family ties are strained. The redneck Police Sergeant Karl Kranski’s niece is Mrs. Andropolus, and his wife is the former Lois Woolrick of local old and respectable money. By this time Callahan is playing touch-and-go with a three-sided war: the police, the gang, and the Chicanos. It’s an absolutely no-win affair.
Callahan is his usual bluff and charming self and welcome for various reasons in each of the three war camps. He is ably aided and abetted by a lovely friend Jan, an interior decorator, his housekeeper Mrs. Casey, and an old pro football buddy Orlando Davis, who is two hundred and seventy pounds of black wit.
The story abounds with ethnic names, ethnic slurs and vintage cars. As ever, Mr. Gault is a master of characterization by dialogue, revealing the undercurrents below the surface of a conversation. Like the eleven previous Brock Callahan books this is a highly readable caper featuring a really “laid back” all around good guy.
December 5th, 2011 at 8:41 pm
Back in the 1980s, if a mystery did not come out in paperback, I did without. Hardcovers were expensive, and there was no easy way to find a specific book you were looking for in used bookshops, even if you knew about it, and Walker did their best to keep the books they published a secret.
The fun is gone, I know, but five minutes ago I finally bought this book (in Near Fine condition) on ABE for $8, including postage.
December 9th, 2011 at 3:49 pm
Yes, I too enjoy the wonders of the Internet when it comes to buying books. It’s easy to give into impulse buying. I found Gault’s work tailed off toward the end of his career. But back in the 1950s and 1960s when Gault was turning out Young Adult novels, I was his biggest fan. I still remember the conclusion of THUNDER ROAD!
December 9th, 2011 at 5:03 pm
George
I’m half and half on the buying of books online. It’s so easy to do, but you lose the fun of the chase. You have to be a true book person, though, to understand what’s “fun” about about finally tracking down a book you’ve been looking for ages for.
I never read any of Gault’s YA novels, though his writing career depended greatly on them. I read most of his early mysteries, but I confess that when he went back to writing them again, after a long layoff, I bought most of them when they came out — this one being an exception — but I never got around to reading them. Richard Prather the same thing. I gobbled them up when they came out in the 50s, but after he switched from Gold Medal to Pocket, I seemed to have lost my enthusiasm for his writing, or he did. (I assume it was more me than he.)