By Patrick Anderson,
whose e-mail address is mondaythrillers@aol.com
Monday, September 24, 2007

THE SHOTGUN RULE

By Charlie Huston

Ballantine. 248 pp. $21.95

Charlie Huston's disturbing sixth novel is further proof that he's one of the most original crime novelists at work today. Huston, who's 40, grew up in California, took a shot at acting in New York, wound up bartending and wrote a novel in his spare time. He knew nothing of the publishing world, so his manuscript gathered dust until a friend showed it to an agent. The novel began a trilogy ("Caught Stealing," "Six Bad Things" and "A Dangerous Man") that was nominated for an Edgar Award (for "Six Bad Things") and won much praise from other writers, but not legions of readers. He also wrote two droll novels, "Already Dead" and "No Dominion," about a Manhattan private eye who's a vampire. These five books are wildly inventive neo-noir that combines slapstick with dead-on dialogue and unflinching realism.

Now comes "The Shotgun Rule," a dark but brilliant portrait of the way many teenage boys live in America -- or, to be precise, how they lived in California in 1983, when Huston himself was 17. It isn't a pretty story, and some of its violence is all but unreadable, but the novel is utterly persuasive. There isn't a false word in it.

For me, however, it started slowly. Huston devotes 40-odd pages to introducing his four teenagers, and kids who spend their time getting high, nagging at each other with inane profanity and listening to heavy metal bands are not urgent concerns of mine. Still, good writing is good writing, and amid this teen wasteland, distinct characters emerge, along with a plot that promises fireworks.

The boys are Hector, Paul, George and Andy. Hector is Hispanic, sports a mohawk and carries a bicycle chain for fights. Paul has a nasty temper and intends to join the Army the day he reaches 18. George is tough but relatively sensible. Andy is George's 15-year-old kid brother and, of all things, highly intelligent, so naturally he is considered weird and is picked on endlessly.

The plot portrays the horrors of drug culture. At the outset, a boy named Timo Arroyo steals Andy's bike. The four friends break into the house Timo shares with his thuggish older brothers and discover a crank lab. They steal a half-kilo and flee. The theft arouses the wrath of a psychotic drug dealer called Geezer, who wants his crank back, lest he run afoul of the ex-bikers who are his overlords in Oakland.

As the boys stumble deeper and deeper into trouble, Huston introduces two of their fathers. Paul's is an alcoholic teacher who's heartbroken that he can no longer connect with his son, who despises him. Andy and George's father works construction, but back in the day was himself a dealer and a dangerous dude. His sons, who don't know about his past, laugh at his platitudes about working hard and obeying the law. They're more impressed by their Aunt Amy, an ex-hippie who's now a nurse and has a cottage industry selling pills she steals from her hospital. She too is caught up in the emerging chaos.

In the novel's chilling climax, the psychotic drug dealer seizes three of the boys and is prepared to torture and kill them until he gets his crank. This long scene is an exercise in terror. You read, and then you look away for a while.

Some of the captives are hurt badly, and we have come to care enough about our wayward teenagers to suffer along with them. The ending is bloody, but Huston offers glimmers of hope amid the carnage.

"The Shotgun Rule" is not literary in any conventional sense, but it has a purity, a raw honesty, that often led me to make literary connections. It's a coming-of-age novel, like "The Catcher in the Rye," although if these kids ever made their way to Pencey Prep, they'd leave the place in ruins. I thought too of the opening lines of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl." No one would call these boys the best minds of their generation, but like Ginsberg's angel-headed hipsters, they are being destroyed by madness, by their own and their parents' ignorance, and by a culture that offers them little sustenance besides illegal drugs, video games, petty crime and mindless music.

Huston tells his story with an admirable detachment, neither condemning nor romanticizing his lost generation. Only in his dedication does he drop his guard:

To the kids who don't know any better.

The ones with attitude problems.

What the hell are they thinking?

Man, believe me, they aren't.

That's the point.

We never do.

With that "we," Huston embraces the past he survived and has now recaptured. If he's lucky, "The Shotgun Rule" will become a cult favorite among young people who recognize its truth. Of course, it could also appeal to readers of all ages who value a dispassionate look at how millions come of age in this strange and unforgiving land of ours.