Mermaid Blues
By Joel Brown
252 pages
$14.95
A Book Review
by Dennis Metrano
Newburyport’s own Joel Brown is back in town with a sequel to his most promising debut “Libertyport” murder mystery (Mirror Ball Man) that is full of more mystery and murder.
The book starts off with a nasty murder in a decidedly non-luxury apartment above The Thirsty Lobster bar, a drinking and meeting saloon known for its character and characters. Any of its regulars could be the murderer.
Brown’s Libertyport is a Port rich in history, architecture, the sea, and larger than life iconoclastic personalities. Much like Newburyport. Talk about swimming with the fishes…
Once again the narrator/central figure Baxter McLean is a washed-up folksinger who had the #1 song in the country 35 years ago. Back then he had Rolling Stone gushing that his was the future face of popular music. Unfortunately that song and the album remained pigeonholed in the Disco discount bins and his career flamed out, spectacularly.
Then thanks to a couple of nouvelle rich internet millionaires (wanting to buy Hip images for themselves) his long stagnant career is Lazarus-like revived. For a few days he’s living The Dream. Then murder, drug dens, religious fanatics (attracted to a topless siren of sorts) and unsavory misfits are once again about to interrupt his journey back to the top of the charts.
It is obvious that Libertyport is a thinly disguised Newburyport (and Plum Island as well). Its inhabitants still occupy and fiercely protect its turf, be it in real life or the pages of Brown’s book.
Mr. Brown is a master of creating composites of central characters and locations. His readers recognize each at first but then realize that a personality or place is not singular, but a combination of several. For the reader there is initially bonding followed by confusion as to who is who and where one is. Eventually the reader realizes that such responsibilities are his own and not the author’s. A unique twist of faith in more than one-way.
Joel Brown is a literary name to be remembered in the future. His Newburyport murder mystery prototype holds much promise. No, he is hardly in the league of such master sequel writers as Philip Craig (who dazzled his readers with his Martha’s Vineyards murder mysteries) or a giant such as Robert Parker (Jesse Stone’s Paradise). However, there is promise that one day a major publisher will pick up Brown’s first books and present them to a massive readership accompanied by glowing reviews.
But we digress.
Mermaid Blues is a delightful; fast-read where its subjects often take on more than their face value. In it conviction sometimes results in actual convictions. It immediately races from dive bar patrons to socialites. Both have motives for murder, but don’t care as long as the drinks remain coming. There are muckraking so-called journalists and more holier-than-holy Holy Rollers than you can imagine. There are Tommy Bahama overpriced Miami Beach threads and fisherman gear that has done just fine for a couple of centuries. Yes, Libertyport is willing to share a hot tub with a multitude partners in between espousing the Holy Scriptures and protesting a topless image in a public space (an innocuous 60’s-like trinket marketplace). The only difference seems to be that one sect drinks Bud Lite and the other fruity martinis; One takes baths at home and the other in outside beach hot tubs.
Apparently Elmer Gantry lives on Plum Island.
Mr. Brown aptly exposes such personalities, but it is his savaging read of the trust fund, ascot-wearing, and martini-addicted socialites (that claim to know antiques and fine paintings as well as their designer cufflinks) that brings out his best and most acerbic writings.
Indeed, Brown’s take on the vast melting pot of his Libertyport is scary but almost always correct. Even the most seductive of his oceanfront mixture of the extreme wealthy, blue-collar worker, and an occasional normal person takes the reader on a decidedly non-Chamber of Commerce guided tour.
________________________ Mr. Brown’s prose has grown into a far more confident style than his debut novel had hope for. His words and dialogue are far more economical in a fashion that will delightfully remind one of perhaps the master of this sacred style of writing, George V. Higgins (The Friends of Eddie Coyle). _____________________
By no means is Joel Brown even vaguely in the treasured league of the master of criminal and legal dialogue of Higgins. No one has truly come close for several decades. But it is fascinating to watch him modestly mature into a writer of note bringing his take on Newburyport and Plum Island along for the promising wild ride he is on track to take.
If you want to be taken through the historic Newburyport streets – their celebrated upscale and the grit and grime pubs, this is the novel to do it. It shows the great divide of working class heroes and villains vs. the quite rich and their distasteful brethren who never met a mirror or spotlight they did not like.
Joel Brown nails each and every one of them.
Newburyport has an embarrassment of phenomenal writers ranging from John P. Marquand, Peter Guralnick, Truman Nelson, Aine Greaney, and Andre Dubus and seemingly a cast of hundreds of other promising authors.
Mr. Brown joins them in knocking on fame and fortune’s door, it takes a hell of a writer to do so.
