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Book: The Winter of Frankie Machine
Wow, that is a huge ???ing image. I'll have to work on that. Anyway, one of the debates that constantly comes up in the world 'o' message board posting is the debate over "genre." Because something is written, or filmed for that matter, in a particular style, does that automatically make it less worthy of discussion or consideration? Is the fact that most genre fiction is, by and large, crap weigh down the good stuff that manages to slip through? One of the guys this most applies to are Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, who are now widely considered to be a couple of the best writers of the WWII and post-war era, as well as pretty much inventing an entire genre, but because of their pulp origins, there's still that literary snobbitude. Or something. Anyway, this debate most recently came up again in a thread on the CHUD Message Boards, and it was on my mind while reading The Winter of Frankie Machine by Don Winslow. Frankie Machine is not high art by any means, and it's not great literature. But it's a pretty fantastic genre novel that I whipped through in about two days. What's it about? Well, see, there's this guy, Frank Machianno. He's a bait shop and linen service owner, surfer, coffee fanatic, does his crossword puzzles just like Stanley from The Office. He's a good guy, and one of the things I love is that he takes us through Frankie's daily life before pulling the reveal that's not really a reveal at all, because it says so on the back cover: Frankie's a retired hit man for the San Diego mafia.
I believe that great genre fiction, and particularly great crime fiction, is like jazz. The same basic form is there, the themes are repeated, and in order to set yourself apart, it's how you riff on those themes. It's the singer, not the song, as it were. Frankie Machine is like great jazz. Sure, Frankie's a hit man forced out of retirement after he's set up, but Winslow creates an engaging and compelling character that we want to see turn out all right. Frankie's not a lug, he's a smart guy, a guy who likes opera and cooking. So we're willing to follow Frankie on his journey of discovery and vengance, which is filled with humor, quotable lines, and several really great action beats along the way. One reason I really enjoyed reading The Winter of Frankie Machine is that, in Frankie's journey to figure out which someone set him up the bomb, we get flashbacks seeing how Frankie got involved in this thing of ours in the first place. Winslow brings the West Coast/San Diego mob scene of the late 60s through the 80s to as vivid life as Scorsese brought Vegas or New York and Chase brought New Jersey. What's notable about this, though, is that the years I mentioned are really about the decline of the mafia, and if it ever becomes a movie, it would be a nice counterpoint to Casino and the missing chapter in the American mob movie saga. This, to me, belongs between Goodfellas and Sopranos in terms of looking at the mafia from the ground level, from the inside. Plus, it has a cameo from Richard Nixon. gotta love that. The Leonard-Justus Institute of Popular Culture rates The Winter of Frankie Machine an 8 out of 10.
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