JOHN WESSEL – This Far, No Further

Island/Dell; paperback reprint, November 1997. Hardcover, first edition: Simon & Schuster, October 1996.

    Here’s an even better example of what I was rambling on about just before this when I was reviewing Dreamboat, the Jack Flippo PI novel by Doug J. Swanson, although I don’t think this first book by John Wessel, also a private eye novel, caught anyone’s eye for an Edgar nomination.

   Wessel’s detective is named Harding, an unlicensed PI working in the Chicago area. Both he and the author seem to have had a three-novel run, and that was all that it appears there will ever be:

         This Far, No Further. Simon & Schuster, 1996; Island/Dell, 1997
         Pretty Ballerina. Simon & Schuster, June 1998. No US paperback edition.
         Kiss It Goodbye. Simon & Schuster, January 2001. No US paperback edition.

   The fact that only the first one came out in paperback certainly says something, but of course it is never easy to interpret these things correctly. One obvious explanation is that for the last ten years (or more?) private eye novels no longer rule the roost as they did, once upon a time. Either Wessel’s writing never caught on, starting with his very first book, or perhaps even more likely, Island/Dell didn’t give him (or the books) the chance they needed.

   And there are not too many series with continuing characters which beat the odds and succeed in hardcover only. Without the paperback reprint coming out a year later, just about the time the next one in hardcover shows up, a series almost always seems to lose steam, then is forced to pack up and leave, never to be seen again.

   Should the Harding books have succeeded? Were they wrongly done in? I have mixed feelings about this. There is a lot to like in This Far, No Further, and there is a lot, well, let’s say that I had problems with, and maybe other readers did too.

Wessel

   First to like: Harding tells his own story, first person (uh-oh) present tense. Present tense? I can live with that, even though it fought me a little. The telling is spirited and enthusiastic, even though Harding has been badly wronged in his life, so far, and the less-travelled (grittier) paths and neighborhoods in Chicago are described with the panache and style of a long-time inhabitant.

   Second to like: Harding’s lady friend Allison, a commercial photographer and (evidently) one-time girl friend who assists him on this case. The banter between them is relaxed, pointed, trenchant and (all at the same time) far more cutting than Spenser ever has had with Susan, as enjoyable as the Robert B. Parker books are and always have been. Nor has much of the past between Alison and Harding been made clear by the end of the book. Allison, who is also very good at the martial arts, seems as well to have close lady friends of her own.

   Not to like very much: The utter sleaziness of the dead girl’s death in a rundown motel outside of Chicago, the victim of what appears to have been a sex tryst that went way too far. Harding was following the male in the party, a noted plastic surgeon whose wife hired the lawyer who hired Harding. Much is made later of videotapes and other paraphernalia.

    Not to like even more: The plot itself eventually becomes verbal sludge and next to impossible to follow. You may take this as an overstatement born out of frustration, and you would be right, but nonetheless, it is true. Harding’s own past – the reason behind the loss of his license – eventually becomes entangled with the doc and his problems, and Harding’s attraction to his wife (and his client, twice removed), and I confess that by that time, I was only skimming the pages.

   As fast as I could. Was I about to about to quit? No.

   Absolutely not. Did I go online and buy the next two books in the series? Yes.

   Can there be more to be said than that? Probably, but I hope I don’t need to.

— November 2006