TITLE: More Than A Vintage Death
AUTHOR: Dennis R. Miller
282 pages, Lulu.com, ISBN 9780389021215 (softcover)
DESCRIPTION: (from the back cover copy): I was a … The unfinished message lay beside the dead man’s hand, sending Alec Knight on a quest through the world of rare vintage paperbacks. Soon, he and former FBI agent Ravi Khan are thrust into a deadly race to locate Nazi plunder buried in an upstate New York town. Before the battle is over, Alex must confront his own mortality, the 20-second Conundrum, and the mysterious all-powerful Dr. V.
MY RATING: 5 out of 5 stars
MY THOUGHTS: I really enjoyed Dennis R. Miller’s period Western novels One Woman’s Vengeance and One Bullet Beyond Justice, and still hope to see more of Nora Hawk and Pete Clawson. But for now, Miller has moved on to a present-day adventure featuring new characters Alec Knight and Ravi Khan that looks to be the first of a series in which the two battle neo-Nazi, and perhaps other terrorist, organizations. And I’m definitely all-in on this.
I’ve been known to haunt used bookstores looking to complete various paperback series or sets of a particular author’s works, but mostly I’m looking for copies I can read and reread – I’m not in it for the pristine first printings or re-sale value. Thus, I know just enough about vintage paperback collecting to be intrigued by Alec’s hobby and how it propels the plot of this novel. And the hobby is definitely central to the plot, not just something to make the main character more interesting. It reminded me of hit man Keller’s stamp collecting hobby in the novels by Lawrence Block. (Although Block’s books are more crime fiction while this is more of a thriller.) Whether the vintage paperback hobby will continue to be important in any subsequent novels, I have no idea. But it is integral not only to the plot of this book but in setting up the kind of person Alec Knight is.
Knight is our first-person narrator. He’s affable, likes his neighbors and friends, has an easy relationship with a girlfriend who lives in NYC. They make it work by alternating who visits who on the weekends. He’s knowledgeable about his hobby and curious about things outside his wheelhouse. He’s also conflicted, dealing with what he calls the 20-second Conundrum: the idea that any random 20 seconds can change the course of someone’s life. A non-spoilery example of this would be pausing in parking lot for a 20 second conversation with a co-worker causing you to end up at a red light instead of being in an intersection as an accident happens. There’s a character-related reason for Alec to have this small mental block that crops up repeatedly as things get more stressful.
Miller sets the book in the town of Big Flats, with forays into nearby Corning and mentions of Horseheads and Elmira. This is the area where I went to college in the 90s (and in the interest of full disclosure, where I first met the author, when his son appeared in a college production of The King and I with me). It’s changed a bit since I lived there, but I’ve been back just often enough that I recognized the places Miller mentions. The author’s familiarity with the area and its history enhances the book’s action and grounds it.
My only complaint with the book is that we don’t really get to know Ravi Khan as well as we perhaps should. I don’t mean to suggest we should know all of his secrets right off the bat – even the reveal that he’s former FBI and what his current job actually entails comes later in the book – but I think a few more scenes establishing his personality and his friendship with Alec would have enhanced the idea that he’s an equal part of this series and not just the main character’s chauffer and butt-kicking assistant. But that’s a minor quibble, and based on where this book left off I suspect we’ll get to know a lot more about Ravi in future books.
I also love the way Miller plays with the idea that Alec Knight, Ravi Khan and the mysterious Dr. V (about whom I can say virtually nothing that isn’t a spoiler) exist in the same world with other familiar literary characters. Knight describes his friend Dick Jones as “my Mycroft” and mentions women having “the Ayesha allure and danger,” and compares a situation to “sitting on McGee’s boat on a calm ocean,” while another character later comments that “Ol’ Sherlock had a habit of getting excited and chasing into things.” These are statements that could be taken as references to actual people as opposed to fictional creations. Even when Knight mentions “Travis McGee, John D. MacDonald’s ‘knight in rusty armor’” or to the pile of Stone: MIA Hunter novels by Stephen Mertz, they’re phrased in a way that implies MacDonald and Mertz are simply chronicling or fictionalizing a real person’s adventures. The author may or may not have intended this, but for someone like me who loves the idea of fictional characters co-existing in the world outside our window, such references are a bonus.
If you love vintage paperbacks, “men’s adventure,” stories where characters unravel clues to find deeper conspiracies lurking, and engaging lead characters, More Than a Vintage Death is highly recommended.