Down and Dirty in Omaha

OCCUPATIONAL HAZARDS

By Jonathan Segura

Simon & Schuster. 247 pp. Paperback, $14

Jonathan Segura, the author of this savagely funny first novel, earned a master's degree in fiction writing from Columbia University and is now a reviewer and editor at Publishers Weekly, all of which suggests he is a young man of sound mind and sterling character. However, there must be a black hole in his past, because "Occupational Hazards" is a dungeon-dark tale of low-rent journalism, political corruption and rampant degeneracy in a hellish Omaha, which in Segura's telling is the armpit of the universe, if not worse.

Our antihero, Bernard Cockburn (pronounced Co-burn, he keeps reminding people), is a $300-a-week reporter for a third-rate Omaha weekly. He lives in a grubby apartment in a dangerous slum with a chubby girl named Allison, who is clearly too good for him. They have their problems: For one, she's given to uppers (mainly cocaine) and he's a "downer guy," which means he consumes oceans of Old Crow and whatever pills he can beg, borrow or steal. Their problems worsen when Allison announces she's pregnant, whereupon he accuses her of setting him up and walks out. Our boy Burn, as he likes to be called, goes ballistic at the very thought of the "wife kids house" lifestyle. Marriage, he figures, "would require a prolonged feigning of interest in someone's life."

But Burn's biggest problems are professional. The slum he calls home is in the process of gentrification, and strange things are happening. He finds hints of corruption in how contracts are being awarded. Meanwhile, a posse of well-armed faith-based nutcases is harassing the neighborhood pimps and whores whom Burn considers his friends. Then some of these vigilantes start dying under mysterious circumstances. Burn, whose journalistic techniques include constant lying and occasional breaking and entering, digs into all this, uncovers widespread political corruption and in time finds his life seriously imperiled. A $300-a-week reporter can, it appears, be murdered with impunity in Omaha. How all this ends must not be revealed, except to say that the author stubbornly resists uplift.

The beauty of the novel is Segura's ability to walk a line between the comedy and the horror of Burn's story. He's a true louse and a world-class cynic, but he's a better man than the corrupt officials and vice lords he's out to nail. Plus he's one hell of a funny narrator. For long stretches, the plot fades into the background and we simply enjoy (if we are so inclined) Burn's portrayal of his deplorable life and the toxic world he inhabits.

For example, we have this less-than-elevated take on his profession: "So long as people can read and there's [expletive] happening, there's a place for me in this world." There is Burn's sentimental memory of meeting his girlfriend when they were both stoned and "her breath reeked something like a decomposing corpse in a sulfur mine." Or there's his pal Cliff's advice on how Burn can get rid of his pregnant girlfriend: "Just go home reeking of another woman and, bang, you're free. Works every time." In one of the sordid gin mills Burn frequents, the fellow on the next barstool "looks like he's pushing eighty, which means he's probably forty." One of my favorite lines may or may not work out of context. Burn, seeking dirt, calls a security company and pretends to be a deranged husband whose wife is cheating on him. As the conversation breaks down, he blurts out, "Hit a trip wire or something when I was crawling around in the bushes with a cleaver. Swear, if I'da caught them in --" and the employee hangs up. If you're blessed with a certain mind-set, that's a gloriously surreal outburst.

Of course, that mind-set is not universally shared, and this is not a book for everyone. It probably helps to be young, hip, cynical and degenerate. That is presumably why the publisher is bringing out "Occupational Hazards" as a trade paperback. The publishing business has changed in recent years. If you look back a few decades, novels were typically brought out in hardback and then, if all went well, a year later appeared again in a paperback edition that sold for around half the original price. To be published as a "paperback original" was an indignity that was imposed on, among others, some fine crime writers when the genre wasn't highly regarded. John D. MacDonald's great Travis McGee novels weren't published in hardcover until late in his career.

Today, editors face financial pressures that often lead them to bring out offbeat novels as less costly trade paperbacks. In some cases, that may be the only way to get edgy novels by young writers published, because their natural audience is disinclined to spend $25 on a book. Some of the most enjoyable novels I've reviewed of late -- Duane Swierczynski's "Severance Package," for example, and Frank Tallis's "Vienna Blood" -- have emerged that way. The lower price does not imply lesser quality. Often the opposite is true. This nicely nasty little novel is a case in point.