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Code 61
Donald Harstad
Fourth Estate £9.99 |
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Reviewed by Mick Herron |
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Much is made on the cover
of ex-cop Harstad's "authenticity", so it's not
surprising that the first few pages of Code 61 amount to a crash
course in radio call-signs and dispatcher etiquette. Before
that, though, there's a rather pointless half-page prologue
which brings nothing to mind so much as Dixon of Dock Green: "It's
been my experience that cases fall into categories that are a
bit different than the examples they cite at the academy …
I think you'll see what I mean." What he means is, the
story's about somebody who thinks he's a vampire. This, in
itself, isn't that preposterous (in the genre, I mean); what
bothered me is the number of people in this Iowan-set story who
know the guy, and also think he's a vampire. I'm hope I'm not
giving away too much of the plot here, because there isn't much
plot involved ("Of all our cases, this one wasn't the most
difficult to solve"); what there is quite a lot of is a
kind of cultural name-dropping. The hero ("My name is Carl
Houseman, and I'm a Deputy Sheriff") is quick to impress on
us his broad frame of reference: expounding on nihilism at the
drop of a hat, listing the heavy books he has at home, and
defining Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle for the edification
of a young suspect. I think we're meant to understand that these
Iowan cops are no hicks. Pity, then, that some of them think to
carry garlic with them while hunting a wannabe vampire ("You
can never be too safe"). That's what I call hick behaviour.
Worth reading if you want to know more about dispatcher
etiquett.
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