Book recommendation: Caught Stealing by Charlie Huston

I may not always have time to devote to in depth reviews, but I would like to have a book recommendation on a more consistent basis, perhaps once a week or so. (ETA: This turned out to be way longer than I had intended it to be. Don't expect something this long every week.)

Back in 2005, I began hearing a lot about a new writer that was making waves in the crime genre by the name of Charlie Huston, and I decided to check him out and see what the hubbub was about. I’m glad I did, because Caught Stealing turned out to be one of the most self assured modern day debut novels I had read up to that point, and marked the start of a bright new talent.

The plot follows Hank Thompson, everyday schlub and bartender, as he gets caught up in a game of cat and mouse with crooked police officers and gangsters over some stolen money he knows nothing about, but might be mixed up in anyways. The plot never quite veers off into unexpected territory, but Huston takes the time to craft a well thought out everyman protagonist with Thompson, and surrounds him with interesting, and often times outlandish, characters to bounce off of. I’m more than willing to deal with a derivative story, as long as it is well written, and for a first novel, Huston did a commendable job. That’s not to say the book is perfect, but Caught Stealing has dialogue that Tarantino would envy, a plot Hitchcock would be proud of, and a style all its own.

There are a couple of things I would like to draw attention to, one of them being the way Huston writes dialogue. I sincerely don’t think there’s a better writer out there for capturing the way people really speak, and it adds an element of realism to the story that cannot be underestimated. There’s a certain edge to some of it, but it would not be out of place coming out of the mouths of real people, unlike the dialogue found in Sin City or some other noir novels. The other thing is how violent the book is. An awful lot of books feature violence, but not many of them manage to make the reader cringe. Huston manages to do this, and he does it by making Thompson utterly human in his abilities and actions. The mystery genre, particularly the noir portion of it, has always had a certain amount of sadomasochism in it, where the protagonist is constantly beaten down, but never really any worse for the wear. Thompson may get beaten down, but it takes its toll, both physically and mentally.

While the quality of his later books contains many peaks and valleys, Charlie Huston’s Caught Stealing remains one of the best examples of a new talent taking the crime genre by storm, and it’s one I would recommend without hesitation to anyone who likes a good, solid piece of noir. In the coming weeks, I will be talking a lot more about Charlie Huston and his progression as a writer, but this is the book that set him on the path that he took and deserves to be read.

Rating: Four bears caught stealing honey out of five.