FFB BRIARPATCH, Ross Thomas

 (from the archives)

from: Libby Fischer Hellmann

Briarpatch, by Ross Thomas

My favorite “forgotten” novel is Briarpatch by Ross Thomas. I’d already published three novels when I stumbled onto it, but when I did, I instantly knew why I write the books I do. Its structure, style, and substance are an indispensable template, and its dog-eared pages will stay in my library forever.

Briarpatch is a structural chameleon. Technically, it’s an amateur sleuth novel. Ben Dill, a Senate staffer in Washington DC journeys to an unnamed Southern city to bury his sister, a homicide detective killed in a bomb explosion. While there, he intends to find out why she died. In short order, though, characters are introduced, complications mount, and by page thirty I wasn’t sure whether I was reading a police procedural, a PI novel, or a thriller, complete with ambitious politicians, intelligence operatives, and arms-dealing mercenaries. In the hands of a lesser talent, this complexity might be disastrous, but Thomas weaves the threads into a seamless, satisfying story.

The prose in Briarpatch -- spare, lucid, silky -- is just this side of Chandler. It has rhythm. And pace. And while it’s easy to read, it’s never dull. Sometimes Thomas breaks the rules, having fun with alliteration, for example, or planting his tongue firmly in his cheek. But the writing is never offensive, and a too clever sentence is redeemed in the next with a thoughtful observation. I come away from Briarpatch thinking Thomas says what he means and yet it means so much more.

I grew up in Washington D.C., and when my family gossiped about the neighbors, we were essentially talking politics. As a result, stories that touch on national or global issues draw me like a moth to the light. Fold in murder, suspense, and small town corruption that stretches to the nation’s capital, and I’m a goner. (I learned after I read Briarpatch that Thomas lived in DC as well). Half way through, I realized we never know the Southern city where Briarpatch takes place, but we don’t need to. It could be any town in which a police chief hungers for higher office, a cop may be on the take, a formerly dirt-poor pal is now a millionaire, and a shady businessman tries to set up his partner.

But perhaps the novel’s most attractive – and durable -- quality is that it’s a story lightly told. Briarpatch never screams or calls attention to itself. Its complexity sneaks up on you-- until you realize you’re in the hands of a master and you’ve been reading a classic. It deserves to be “rediscovered.”