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AVALANCHE by PATRICK McMANUS SIMON & SCHUSTER, NEW YORK (2007) HARDBACK, 291 pp U.S. $25.00, CAN. $28.99 |
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No question about it – Patrick McManus is currently the undisputed dean of humorous outdoor writers. Has been for many years, and will probably continue to hold the post for years to come. I first encountered him about fifteen years ago and have enjoyed his books since. Over the years his many columns in Outdoor Life and other magazines have been collected into some 15 books, beginning with A Fine and Pleasant Misery (1978) and concluding with The Bear in the Attic (2002). Three of these collections became New York Times bestsellers. Recently he has launched a new and different approach to outdoor writing – a humorous outdoor mystery series starring Bo Tully, the intrepid sheriff of Blight County, Idaho. Humorous? Outdoor? Mystery? What gives here. There are many good mystery writers out there. It’s a genre that has been around for many, many years and has produced some remarkably good literature, ranging from the plain-jane shoot-‘em ups to intensely physiological thrillers such as Silence of the Lambs, by Thomas Harris or the graphic underworld crime novels of Elmore Leonard or the atmospheric, moss-draped and often brutally violent adventures of detective Dave Robicheaux in his hometown of New Iberia, Louisiana. And we know that there are probably enough outdoor writers (people who write about being in the outdoors as a central theme) of varying skills to stock every pool, riffle and run of the streams in this county. And maybe a few more. Many of them write books. Some of these books have become enduring narrative, non-fiction masterpieces of the genre. They cover such activities as exploration, survival, sailing, mountaineering, etc. or deal in depth with nature and the environment. They range from the journals of Lewis and Clark (1804) and the voyage of Joshua Slocum (Sailing Alone Around the World, 1900) to Ray Bergman’s Trout (1938), William Least Heat-Moon’s River Horse (1999), and a host of other titles, one of which, Winter Dance, by Gary Paulsen, I reviewed a few months ago. Humor writers have also been with us for eons. Mark Twain, Art Buchwald, James Thurber, E. B. White, Will Rogers, S. J. Perelman, Erma Bombeck, and many, many others have written humor that ranges from sharp satire to out and out, back- slapping burlesque. The better humor writers usually intend to evoke wry smiles and amusement rather than outright belly laughs. Someone like Kurt Vonnegut may lace the material with a definite social message or two. BUT…I don’t think I’ve ever come across a writer who attempted to meld all three genres into one book. Does McManus pull it off? Avalanche is the second Sheriff Bo Tully Mystery, the first, Blight’s Way, was published in 2006. Both are set in the hook and bullet country of Idaho. (Isn’t that where the inept L.A.P.D. detective, Mark Fuhrman, of the O.J. Simpson trial fled to?) Bo Tully is called out to solve a missing person case, the setting being a tony vacation lodge high in the mountains. Accompanied by his retired sheriff father, Pap, who cannot fasten a seat belt (an endlessly fruitful opportunity for deadpan comments on the Tully family gene pool, as the two are constantly in and out of the departmental Explorer), Bo encounters a host of difficulties in solving the case. Peopled with a baker’s dozen of stereotypical suspects – moneyed property owners, drunken frat boys, grubby gangster land cronies, unflappable down-at-home hired help, and a still interested old flame with her team of sled dogs (!), Bo fumbles his way through the evidence which turns out to be a murder case. Tension and suspense sort of builds and we’re led to believe that it’s a good thing Pap is covering for Bo. Sure enough, Pap is assigned the job of covering Bo on a dangerous face-to face meeting with the murderer, his hiding spot, an old outhouse. Alas, the elder Tully genes fail miserably in one of the oldest parodies in outdoor literature – getting caught with your pants down, i.e., answering a call of nature just as the big buck comes into view: “I’m sorry, Bo,” he blurted out. “I was sitting on the bench in the privy…jacked a shell into the rifle…started to open the door…the latch had slipped…door stuck tight…I swear, Bo, this is the first time in my life I ever got caught unprepared to shoot.” But the suspect has been shot (wounded) and Bo survives unharmed. Who fired? Well, Bo of course, though he won’t admit it, ever, to anyone. Gotta protect those Tully reputations. Dukes of Hazzard, de ja vue, pure and simple. Okkie dookey! Great fun and somewhat entertaining (for $25.00, mind you). But not exactly a great breakthrough in creative writing. That is not to say that McManus is a lousy writer. Quite the contrary. His reputation will survive quite handily from his previous work, the earlier books featuring such characters from his own life as Eddie Muldoon, Rancid Crabtree and Retch Sweeney – local folk we can all relate to in one fashion or another from our own youthful experiences. It’s simply that in the Bo Tully series McManus may be guilty of over reach, almost as if Mark Twain were to cast Huckleberry Finn as Inspector Clouseau. Nor is McManus some sort of literary snob unable and unwilling to share his wins and loses with his readers. I was pleasantly surprised to discover his own website complete with a blog which he actually keeps up to date. I would encourage any McManus fan to log on. His biography (really an auto-biography) is better reading, frankly, than the Bo Tully stuff. In his blog of March 15, 2007 he talks about the Bo Tully series, and the difficulty of creating characters: “Characters can be practically a full-time job. They’re running all over the place constantly, and it drives you crazy keeping track of them.” Having read Avalanche, I couldn’t agree more. The Outdoor Column Collections
Mostly-Non-Fiction Titles
Bo Tully Mystery Series
The Authorized Website of Patrick McManus
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