By Preston Lang
166 pages(All Due Respect Books; June 30, 2016)
Electronic version through Amazon
ASIN: B01HSYEMM2
It’s easy to like a crime story that begins with a convenience
store supervisor threatening to fire a clerk solely because he was robbed at gunpoint.
In Preston Lang’s latest, The Sin Tax, that’s
exactly what happens.
The book opens with an initial exchange between counterman Mark reviewing a video of a robbery that occurred earlier in the evening with his edgy, arrogant boss, Janet:
The book opens with an initial exchange between counterman Mark reviewing a video of a robbery that occurred earlier in the evening with his edgy, arrogant boss, Janet:
“If you get
robbed again, you’re fired,” she said.
“Excuse
me?”
“If it
happens again, you are fired. That’s all.”
“I had a
man stick a gun in my face, then you make me watch [the security video of it]
twice, and now you’re telling me I’m fired?”
“You’re not
fired. You’ve still got your job. But if it happens again, you are gone.”
“I don’t
think that’s fair,” he said.
“Let me ask
you a question: why was there 240 dollars in the register?”
“Because I
didn’t have a chance to put the extra cash in the—”
“You didn’t
have a chance? You want me to wind it back so we can look at video of you
standing at the counter reading for half an hour with 240 dollars sitting in
your reg?”
“That was a
mistake,” he said.
“Fine, it
was a mistake. If it happens again— you’re fired.”
Mark looked
at the screen. He could see the back of the thief’s sweatshirt, stained and
fraying with a yellow number 44 ironed on the back; and he could see himself,
looking useless and defeated.
“Next time
I’ll risk my life to save a few Milano cookies,” he muttered.
“What’s
that?”
“Nothing.”
Mark and Janet's less than cordial relationship is at
the center of the book. It turns out that both are scammers,
looking for a shot at the brass ring. Mark, a Slovenian immigrant who is also
an ex-con, is a small-timer who has been getting by on nickel-dime jobs, waiting for opportunities
to score, largely through ripping off the illegal cigarettes (smuggled from
other states, stolen from shipments) that seem to be the lifeblood of every
mom-and-pop store in New York.
Janet has a bigger
prize in mind: the fortune in cash that her boss, Rosa, the owner of a chain of
convenience stores, has socked away in a safe deposit box.
In fact, everybody in
this tightly written, gripping noir thriller is involved in some sort of confidence
game:
* Mark’s “friend,” Slider, is also his accomplice in the cigarette heist
racket;
*Rosa is dealing hot cigarettes and looking for criminals who traffic in them for a lower price to supply her chain of cheesy businesses;
* Luka and his brother, Herman, are a pair of street-wise but dumb-assed Slovenians dealing cigarettes stolen on pallets from legitimate dealers;
* Even Rosa’s buddy Lou, a penny-ante gangster, is a dipshit. When she asks him to provide backup for the transaction, Lou “protects” her with a pair of lames who couldn’t find their way out of an IRT station if they were standing under the exit sign.
*Rosa is dealing hot cigarettes and looking for criminals who traffic in them for a lower price to supply her chain of cheesy businesses;
* Luka and his brother, Herman, are a pair of street-wise but dumb-assed Slovenians dealing cigarettes stolen on pallets from legitimate dealers;
* Even Rosa’s buddy Lou, a penny-ante gangster, is a dipshit. When she asks him to provide backup for the transaction, Lou “protects” her with a pair of lames who couldn’t find their way out of an IRT station if they were standing under the exit sign.
These people run
absolutely counter to the ironclad writer’s rule that you have to give readers
somebody with whom they can sympathize or they will put your book aside. As Bart Simpson would say, Au Contraire, mon frere! I
couldn’t take my eyes off this damned book even to tap a kidney.
Every person is unlovable; hell, they aren't even remotely likeable. They are all the kind of people who you shake hands with on meeting then immediately check how many fingers you still have.
Every person is unlovable; hell, they aren't even remotely likeable. They are all the kind of people who you shake hands with on meeting then immediately check how many fingers you still have.
When each body drops, the only question you'll face is: how the fuck did this asshole manage to last even this long? He should have been trussed up by an undertaker and shot full of formaldehyde a couple of chapters back!
At the book’s end, only one of these losers is still alive. And broke. Even that protagonist is forced back to square one as one of the nameless, faceless toilers in a sleazy convenience store.
It's a reversal of fortune somewhat like the one in William Gresham's great novel, Nightmare Alley, in which Stan Carlisle, a fake psychic who climbs to the top of the fortune-telling racket, ends up an alcoholic geek in a carnival sideshow.
It may be better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven, but to serve in hell? Not so damned much.
I can only think of one other recent noir novel that features such a collection of unsympathetic creeps and losers: Mike Monson’s darkly satisfying What Happens in Reno.
Lang’s little foray into the confederacy of creeps is just as excellent.
If you like
fiction so dark and nihilistic that you finish it feeling like you have a pair
of welding goggles super glued to your face, The Sin Tax is exactly
what you are looking for.
I loved it. I think you
will, too.