Home »
Great start to a promising writing career
Book Review
By Derryll White
Corbett, David (2002). The Devil’s Redhead.
Corbett is a new writer to me. I got the book at a good price from a thrift store, attracted as much by the dust cover as anything. He has turned out to be the kind of writer I enjoy – very straight-talking and aware of the nuances of American excess. Corbett has done his homework on the inner working of drug importing (smuggling) and puts down a credible story with strong stand-alone characters.
So, the voice is direct and the characters unfold and grow in a strong, believable fashion. The author is very good at capturing the inner dialogue of people under stress, bent by drugs and confused by love. When I read Corbett I read stories and feelings out of my own past. He makes the reader reflect while he builds future possibilities of a better life. I found myself saying, “Yes, yes! I know that!”
I think David Corbett dwells too much on violence. His main character, Daniel Abatangelo, has always eschewed violence in a drug importing business that now embodies it. Daniel always attributes his avoidance of violence to luck and superior skill in reading people. But coming out of jail after a 10-year stint he finds the world has changed. Cartels and gangs have taken over the drug market. Corbett throws Abatangelo into a nasty stew of power, disregard for life and subversive manipulation. It tests him in many ways. One of the things I really appreciated was Abatangelo’s way of shaping his changed circumstances with a camera. He shows that art can change the way one understands the world.
Above all else ‘The Devil’s Redhead’ is a love story. The environment is tough and harsh, the people (most of them) are rough, crooked, grinding, loser types. But the love Dan Abatangelo has for Lachelle Beaudry catches at my heart, makes me feel that I want some of that – each and every day.
I will keep my eyes open for new David Corbett novels. I thought “The Devil’s Redhead’ was a great start to a promising writing career.
********
LAS VEGAS – …he hit the Strip, searching out luck – the right house, the right table – plying his way through the bus-delivered couples and the metallic clamor and the popping lights, a deafening maze of kitschy pandemonium dedicated to full-throttle indulgence, chance, a little flesh, the mighty buck.
ECONOMY – A few of the houses had kitchen lights burning, left on for workers due home in a few hours from graveyard. There were fewer such lights than in the past. The refineries were closing here, moving to Mexico. Everything with an income to it was moving to Mexico or Malasia, or some other Third World backwater, and what wasn’t moving was staying put with foreigners running the show.
BEING – “Do you believe in echo?” he asked her suddenly.
The question roused her. “Come again?”
“Echo,” he said.
She started.
“’Who can believe in echo, when day and night he lives in urban confusion?’ It’s a question posed by Kierkegaard.”
DEPRESSED – Is there a word in the language, she wondered, in any language, for someone as hellbent as I’ve been to do the right thing, someone committed to real charity, not lip service, the Good Samaritan and all that, someone who puts her own life aside to care for someone else, some lowly forgotten other, the least of my brethren – is there a word for someone who does all that, does it for years, only to see it crushed in three weeks’ time, carried away by a bitter wind of insanity, cruelty and death? Yeah, she thought, there’s a word. And it’s nothing grand or tragic. The word is “depressed.”
LOVE – Maybe fate is love, and love requires nothing more than the courage to be seen for who you are.
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
