Fri 8 Jul 2016
A Mystery Review by Barry Gardner: NEAL BARRETT, JR. – Pink Vodka Blues.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[7] Comments
NEAL BARRETT, JR. – Pink Vodka Blues. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1992. Kensington, paperback, 1997.
I was familiar with Barrett as an entertaining, really quite good, science fantasy writer. However, though John D. MacDonald and others have crossed the genre lines successfully, it’s far from a sure thing, and I didn’t set my expectations too high.
PVB is the kind of story that really doesn’t lend itself well to summarization. Russell Murray, an alcoholic small-time reporter, awakes with a strange woman in his bed and missing a day; not too uncommon for Russell. This time, though, his blank spot includes murder, Mafia hit men on his trail, and a Mafia boss’s boyhood chum who wants to be President.
Russell ends up in a detox center and is befriended by Sherry Lou, a rich girl with a vodka jones. They flee together, hunting a briefcase he has lost which everyone seems to want, and trying to stay a step ahead of the hit men.
The above doesn’t begin to give the flavor of the book. In some ways a black comedy, some ways a straight story, it is in all ways a bravura performance. Barrett has a marvelous ear for dialogue and a fine narrative skill. A good friend has said that this reminds him of Thorne Smith, and while I don’t see the similarity as strongly as he does, the comparison is not inappropriate.
Russell and Sherry Lou are funny and human, and more than a little tragic. Barrett’s depiction of alcoholism is as matter-of-factly, even humorously, chilling as you’re likely to find. The plot is a little too wild to be realistic (a 70 year old granny hit-lady?), but I’m sure it was intended to be.
I don’t usually like this kind of book — witness my aversion to Carl Hiaasen — but I liked this one. You’ll either love it or hate it, but you ought to try it.
July 10th, 2016 at 3:33 am
I didn’t know Barrett ventured into mystery. Sounds interesting.
July 10th, 2016 at 8:59 am
I own this book, but I’ve never opened it. Now I’m convinced that I should.
From Hubin, it appears that Barrett wrote at least four what might be called conventional mysteries. This excludes any adult western-detective series, crossover SF, and Batman and Judge Dredd novelizations.
Pink Vodka Blues (n.) St. Martin’s 1992.
Dead Dog Blues (n.) St. Martin’s 1994.
Skinny Annie Blues (n.) Kensington 1996 [Wiley Moss]
Bad Eye Blues (n.) Kensington 1997 [Wiley Moss]
Moss I found online described as an “ace illustrator of insects,” whatever that means.
July 13th, 2016 at 5:41 am
Moss?
And here I thought most people knew Barrett for his crime fiction more than his westerns or his SF…
July 13th, 2016 at 5:42 am
Ah, it’s early. I haven’t read the Moss novels. Presumably, he draws insects! Seems like a likely Barrett character job.
July 13th, 2016 at 11:16 am
This isn’t a complete list of Barrett’s science fiction and fantasy, but I think it goes to show that Barry was right in his review in thinking of him as a SF writer:
Aldair series —
1 Aldair in Albion (1976)
2 Aldair, Master of Ships (1977)
3 Aldair, Across the Misty Sea (1980)
4 Aldair: The Legion of Beasts (1982)
Novels —
Kelwin (1970)
The Gates of Time (1970)
The Leaves of Time (1971)
Highwood (1972)
Stress Pattern (1974)
The Karma Corps (1984)
The Hereafter Gang (1991)
Interstate Dreams (1999)
July 17th, 2016 at 7:03 pm
This is long, and this is lame. I own this book, because it was set to be turned into a movie starring short-lived power couple possibility Whoopi Goldberg (who is my favourite actress ever) and Ted Danson. (Yes I did add that he was going to do this movie on Wikipedia. Sadness.)
Within first discovering PVB two days before 2014 was to start, Barrett passed no less than two exact weeks after – what a coincidence! A little less than six months after this happened, I had little sleep during the night of June 22/morning of June 23 because I was to go to Glastonbury. The lack of sleep was due to me downloading the presumably only draft to the film (by Marshall Brickman of Annie Hall fame) for only £5 and it being in my spam folder by mistake.
Reading the draft, they kept and changed all the wrong bits of the book, for example changing Agent Max Walker’s name to Agent John Walker, inserting a scene where Sherry gives Russ a handjob in the bath instead of the green bra removal scene, and removing the words “I hope you don’t mind” from the Sherry-throws-up-in-filing-cabinet scene. If the blackface incident never happened, I have a feeling that the subsequent two or three drafts would have corrected these, but we were all stuck with a shit draft and Theodore Rex happening.
I also own Dead Dog and Bad Eye Blues. None of his sci-fi (“overturned orchid kissed with dew”, oh my god). As you can tell from my website, I am quite involved in queer circles, and if I ever meet Bob the Drag Queen (the current winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race and a die-hard Whoopi fan who has a tattoo of her), I’d give her my copy of PVB and spread the gospel further. I have already spread the gospel to friends, a one-time pen pal from Chicago named Erika, and Reddit, which is sad, but this is my aforementioned lameness showing.
July 17th, 2016 at 7:23 pm
I have to add a correction to what I have said: it was the evening on June 24 and morning of June 25 that I downloaded and read the script.