A twisted tale

1930s Southwest fitting backdrop for Greaves’ gritty mystery
by Hunter Knox

I’m a big fan of both crime novels and of Westerns, so when I come across a book such as C. Joseph Greaves’ Hard Twisted, which so magnificently combines these two genres, I get a little excited. There’s something about crime set in the Southwest – an unmarked grave in some scraggly desert arroyo; a dusty revolver glinting in the sun; a slow, deliberate threat made in a deep whiskey voice – that just seems plain grittier than crime set elsewhere. The ragged, hardened, desert landscape endows crimes set with a piece of its own natural violence. It gives them a kind of ominous weight, and the crimes that occur in Hard Twisted are no different.

 The story follows the accidentally intertwined lives of 13-year-old Lucille “Lottie” Garrett, her homeless father, Dillard Garrett, and a newly released Leavenworth inmate by the name of Clint Palmer. The action moves from Oklahoma to Texas, where Dillard mysteriously disappears and Lottie is taken on a whirlwind crime spree that twists to each state of the Four Corners. Events finally culminate a year later in the Greenville, Texas, “skeleton murder” trial of 1935 – an actual event given fictional life here by Greaves. A former lawyer, Greaves inserts flashes of striking courtroom dialogue at the beginning of every chapter. We get gambling and cockfights, standoffs and a horse race, chicken decapitations and, for a little local color, scenes set in 1930s Durango at the Strater Hotel. There is, to say the least, plenty of substance here for the action-hungry.

The bulk of the novel, though, concerns itself with the intimate connection between conman Palmer and Lottie. It’s an awful sort of relationship, and one we can never quite wrap our heads around. It is vicious and grotesque in the fact that Lottie is, after all, 13 years-old, and Palmer so easily and cruelly takes advantage of her. But it never stays so simple. This is where Greaves is at his best – in these quiet moments in between all the “action.” He weaves a terribly intricate and complex relationship that ultimately shows us what a tragic place the world can be for a young girl.  

What also sets the novel apart is its prose. It is extremely well-written, better than most crime fiction and certainly better than many of the Westerns I’ve read. Some sentences linger on and on and pull at you until you’re out of breath and gasping. Others are brutally short, punching you in the gut. Greaves can devastate you or make you laugh. It’s really brilliant to read. I won’t go so far as to say, as others have done, that this novel is “McCarthy-esque.” Comparisons like this are rarely useful, except maybe for marketing purposes.

Greaves’ novel is set in the Southwest, and he uses the word “before” instead of “in front of,” but the comparisons to McCarthy stop right about there. Hard Twisted isn’t Blood Meridian, but it doesn’t have to be. It is good in its own right. It is a wonderfully gripping tale set in an equally gripping location, and that will always be enough to keep me reading.
 
 
JusttheFacts
What: Meet the Author: C. Joseph Greaves
When: Tues., Nov. 27, 6:30 p.m.
Where: Maria’s Bookshop, 960 Main Ave.