Maynard Soloman, American archetype

Maynard Soloman is an American archetype — solo man. Get it? — roaming the heartland alone, free of emotional commitments, fighting for the little guy, his only goals self-preservation and righting wrongs.

Except he and the stories in which he appears are funnier than all that. His steed is a decaying Winnebago motor home on which a vandal has spray-painted that Maynard Soloman Investigation Services SUKS!, and Soloman is on the run not from outlaws or marauding Comanches, but from unpaid medical bills.

The titles of the 4 Funny Detective Stories — Starring Maynard Soloman say much about author Benjamin Sobieck's targets: "Maynard Soloman Solves the War on Drugs," "Maynard Soloman Fixes Social Security and Eats a Pony," "Maynard Solomon & The Job-Nabbin' Illegal Immigrants," and, in a story that comes as close to heart-warming as the old cuss gets, "Maynard Soloman Proves Santa Claus is Real."

So, yes, the stories are sharply satirical, but even the villains are not all that threatening as individuals. They remind me of Bob and Ray's boobs and hapless schemers. So, what keeps the stories from veering over into mere spoofs? That Maynard, booted off the police Obscenities Division because of health problems and cheated of medical payments by "the arthritic bean counters on the force," opens his own mobile detective agency "to keep gas in the 'bago and the can opener turning." That they show a U.S. government aiming massive amounts of money at small problems while neglecting big ones. That Maynard will sneak in a mention of his stomach pains and his long-gone wife. There's is always the barest hint of grimness beneath the fun.

Mostly, though, Maynard is the philosopher-cum-man-of-action that we all wish we could be, the detective who solves mysteries by turning idiocy against itself. He knows about the state of customer service in America but, unlike most of us, he acts:

“In my years, I’ve learned that customer service is a luxury that must be demanded. Asking for help nowadays is like organ donation. You’d better have a good reason. And nothing conveys reason better than a round of healthy cursing.

 “`Hey, you blasphemous pillock. If you’re done bogging off, I need some gal-damn service,' I say and kick the box a couple times.”

If you don't know what a blasphemous pillock is, don't worry; neither does Maynard. But it sure sounds good.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Maynard Soloman takes the bus

Benjamin Sobieck may be the great American urban author, at least when it comes to that part of American urban life led, willingly or unwillingly, on buses and subways, especially at night.

I use public transportation, and I've worked evening for years, so I had a certain sympathy with Sobieck's story "Maynard Soloman Takes the Bus to a Strip Club," and not just for its opening line: "A gas station corn dog is the only thing in life that won’t lie to you."

No, I like the story for its gritty, no-bull urban realism:

"I tromp to a bus stop a block away. I hope my old saying about public transportation isn’t still true:

“`Public transportation is great unless you have to use it.'

***

"I flip a shiny nickel to the bus driver and scoot down the aisle before she can say anything. She can keep the change, see. I lug around enough loose coin already.

"The place is gal-damn packed. Smells worse than I thought, too. Like old fish reheating on a car radiator. Could be whatever that one guy over there is eatin’ outta that gun boat. Shit, that smells something awful.

"But it don’t smell half as bad as how that abomination on that other guy’s face looks. It could have its own Social Security number. Next to him is a gal looking ready to chuck a dummy.

"Oh, and have a look-see over there. It’s another road sister reading from a Bible. Loudly. I hear every other word, because some jackass with a boombox has this horseshit thug music at full volume. The thing cuts in and out. Either that or he’s listening to the edited version. I can’t tell.

"Still, a boombox? This freak musta hopped on in 1985 and never got off.

"Seems to be the state of most of the human wreckage in here. This bus, it isn’t taking them anywhere. They’re already here. This is the cheapest hotel in town."

Read my first rave about Sobieck and his noble, dyspeptic protagonist.

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

The year's best crime-fiction reading

Here's my year's best in crime reading, a mix of new, old, and newly translated books, a stew of novels and short stories, rediscovered pulp classics, literary masterpieces, books and e-books from Ireland, Canada, Italy, Japan, South Africa, North Dakota, New Orleans, the American West and elsewhere, and one book that is only tangentially crime. But tough noogies; it's my list.

It's early for a year's-best post, but this way you'll have plenty of time to stock up on holiday gifts, and I get to make a best-of-December post in a few weeks.

• Adventures of Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles and Adventures of Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles, Vol. II by Edward A. Grainger (David Cramner)
• Cold Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty
• The Walkaway by Scott Phillips
• Tumblin’ Dice by John McFetridge
• 4 Funny Detective Stories — Starring Maynard Soloman by Benjamin Sobieck
• Cruel Poetry by Vicki Hendricks
• The Blood of an Englishman by James McClure
• Johnny Porno, Shakedown, and Rough Riders by Charlie Stella
• A Private Venus by Giorgio Scerbenenco
• Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead by Sara Gran
• The Name of the Game Is Death, One Endless Hour, and Vengeance Man by Dan J. Marlowe
• Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
• Pronto by Elmore Leonard
• Slaughter’s Hound by Declan Burke

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Character names that carry meaning

Two of the books in Wednesday's year's-best-in-crime-reading post feature protagonists with especially resonant names: Benjamin Sobieck's 4 Funny Detective Stories — Starring Maynard Soloman (Solo man. Get it?) and Sara Gran's Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead. (What does the prototypical fictional detective do if not use her wits to make murky situations clear?)

Declan Burke's Slaughter's Hound has some names fraught with meaning, too, if you're up on your Irish. Sobieck, Gran, and Burke have a light touch with names, but this significant-name thing brings peril. Get too obvious, and you risk sounding like John Bunyan.

Here's your question: What are your favorite character names that bear a message? What character names go too far and hit you over the head with their significance?

© Peter Rozovsky 2012