Category Archives: Review

The Twenty-Year Death
By Ariel S. Winter
Titan Books/Hard Case Crime/670 Pages
$25.99
August 14, 2012
Review by Blu Gilliand

I’m at a bit of a disadvantage when it comes to reviewing The Twenty-Year Death, the debut novel(s) of Ariel S. Winter. In the book, which is actually three full-length novels forming one interlocking story­, Winter assumes the style of three masters of crime fiction: for Malniveau Prison, he’s channeling Georges Simenon; The Falling Star represents Raymond Chandler; and Police at the Funeral is meant to invoke Jim Thompson. According to other reviews I’ve read, Winter has done a more than capable job of paying tribute to these styles without falling into outright mimicking or, worse, parody. That’s hard for me to judge, as I’m not overly familiar with the work of the three gentlemen in question, so I’ll leave that to the experts.

Now, before you storm my house with pitchforks and torches, let me be clear: I know who Jim Thompson and Raymond Chandler are and what they mean to crime/noir fiction (Mr. Simenon, unfortunately, is an entirely unknown quantity to me). But could I pick their individual styles out of a lineup? No, I could not. Has that undercut my enjoyment of The Twenty-Year Death? Hard to say. I admit that I may be missing out on an important part of the experience by not “getting” all of Winter’s references to the work of these authors, but the fact is I thoroughly enjoyed the book despite my own ignorance. (Now there’s a blurb for you…)

For now, let me stick to the aspects of the book I feel capable of intelligently discussing. Malniveau Prison is set in a small, quiet village in France, where a baker discovers a dead body practically on his doorstep. The murdered man turns out to be an inmate from the titular prison, and who killed him (and how his body got out of the prison) is the central mystery that soon consumes the local police force. That mystery soon swells to include a variety of crimes, including the disappearance of an American writer’s wife, two missing children, and more dead bodies uncovered in a farmer’s field.

From there we move to The Falling Star, which takes us to 1940s-era California and the shady heart of the emerging movie business. Along for the ride are a couple of characters from Malniveau Prison, and it is here that we get the first true sense of the story Winter is telling. These characters (I’m working hard to spoil as little as possible here) have risen to great heights, but when we reconnect with them they are perched on the edge of an equally great fall. The aftermath of that fall, and their tragic attempts at putting the shattered pieces back together again, is chronicled in Police at the Funeral, the hard-biting conclusion to Winter’s grand experiment.

In reality, it’s a simple story told in complex fashion, and as far as I’m concerned it’s a success. Kudos to Hard Case Crime and Titan Books for rolling the dice on this, a package that likely would have sent many a publisher screaming for the nearest exit. It’s the kind of thing that could have easily been a misstep, especially when considering the reputations of the authors Winter is paying tribute to here. However, under Winter’s steady hand and clear vision, The Twenty-Year Death delivers a rousing and thoroughly readable story.

There’s another benefit, as well; aside from getting a huge, sprawling story that raced by like books a third of its length, The Twenty-Year Death has inspired me to seek out the works of Messrs. Chandler, Thompson and Simenon. I look forward to getting several books by each under my belt and then tackling Winter’s novel again, this time catching all the nuance and flavor that my lack of familiarity with these gentlemen has likely caused me to miss. If you have any suggestions of where to begin with these writers, please share them with me in the comments section. In the meantime, don’t let the size and pedigree of Winter’s book intimidate you-The Twenty-Year Death is an exhilarating read that’s already secured a spot among my favorites from this year.

*****

Blu Gilliand is a freelance writer of fiction and nonfiction. He writes a monthly column, “Deadlines,” for White Cat Publications. He also covers horror fiction at his blog, October Country (http://theoctobercountry.wordpress.com), and is a regular contributor to Horror World (www.horrorworld.org). Stalk him on Twitter at @BluGilliand.