SAYONARAVILLE by Curt Colbert
I’ll be completely honest. I bought this book from my local independent bookstore because of the BACK COVER.
All of the text was squeezed into a column on the left side and printed in multiple fonts, turning it into an eye-popping art project. The first sentence read: “Who chopped off insurance agent Henry Jamison’s head with a samurai sword?”
A blurb below referenced “Rat-a-tat-tat dialogue” and a “Blue-collar town miles away from the shiny, happy, java-sucking Microsoft town of today.”
I plunked down the cash and reeled out with a private eye tale set in post-WWII Seattle. Jake Rossiter isn’t Sam Spade, but he’s close.
A veteran of the war in the Pacific, notably Guadalcanal, Jake Rossiter is a private detective who calls Seattle “Rat City” for the number of rat fink gamblers, crooks, and other criminal types running the place. His business partner is the strawberry blonde Miss Jenkins (who never gets a first name.) She is recently elevated from secretary and ready to
take on her first case.
Jake isn’t sweet on her and vice versa . . . so they say.
Henry Jamison has an office in the same building, plus he was Jake’s own insurance agent, so Jake is conveniently on the scene to investigate. At the same time, Miss Jenkins takes on the case of the Japanese-American Hashimoto family. Forced into internment camps during the war, when they came back, their store was targeted by mobsters trying to force
them out. Not only that, but when their son—a decorated war veteran--fought back, he ended up in jail.
Despite his medals, Frank Hashimoto must prove himself over and over.
Anti-Japanese sentiment is alive and well in Seattle, a West Coast city that spent the war years fearful of a Pearl Harbor-like attack by Japanese forces. Jake and his circle of friends battled the Japanese across the blistering, bloody Pacific so don’t expect them to be chummy now.
As Jake peels back the layers of the insurance agent’s fraudulent activities, he is also reluctantly pulled into the Hashimoto affair and the action heats up. The plot is tight, the pace is swift, the whiskey pours freely, dialogue fires at Gatling gun speed, and Seattle’s mean streets are on full display. This would make an excellent
movie.
I can’t overstate how authentically the story was told. Besides the insurance agent who lost his head, hard things are addressed. Prejudices, both old and new. How we get past them. How we find common ground. No mincing or sugar-coating.
The style is very Raymond Chandler. Women are always after Jake. Men drink booze and spit dialogue out of the corner of their mouths. Jake drives a Roadmaster.
If you like hard-boiled historical mystery, this one’s for you.
Highly recommended.
