The bar at the Ritz-Carlton looks out on the Public Gardens and requires a tie. I’ve looked out on the Public Gardens from other vantage points before, without a tie, and never felt at a loss, but maybe the Ritz knows something I don’t.’ ( A Drink before the War by Dennis Lehane)
The opening of Lehame’s novel communicates the rhythm of the narrator’s thought processes and his predilection for irony, a characteristic notably ‘signatured’ by Raymond Chandler’s famous detective Philip Marlowe. We thus ‘hear’ the voice of the protagonist as intimately as the breath of another close by. He breathes out and we breathe in!
Lehane’s detective is also Marlowe-like in his detached observations on the behaviours and conventions of the rich. He visits the details of protocol here with a barely concealed, sardonic smile.
Wit is ubiquitous and there is no doubt that cynicism like this can carry a gun. I also enjoy Lehane’s faith in the comma! His prose style has a pulse and he gives representation to such a life force in syntax that ensnares and seduces.
Sparkling as a shattered decanter.