Niceville
Carsten Stroud
If Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie
co-wrote a supernatural detective story, you'd probably end up with something
like Carsten Stroud's Niceville.
Titled after its setting, the story begins with the sudden vanishing of a
little boy (not a figure of speech—he literally disappears) and the killing of
several police officers. The effects of both events spread out, affecting the
lives of 21 different characters throughout the course of the story,
interconnecting them in a complex web of secrets and conspiracies that have their
roots back at the turn of the twentieth century.
I mention Tarantino because of the
book’s snappy dialogue. The conversations are quippy and entertaining,
effectively holding the reader’s attention. The Ritchie parallel comes from Stroud’s
ability to string together so many storylines in ways that interconnect like a
fascinating puzzle box, granting multiple eureka moments to readers as we're
given tantalizing bits of info with which to try and stitch together our own
answers.
It's difficult to classify Niceville as a single genre because the
book makes effective use of a cornucopia of different tropes. It's a noir
mystery structured like a morbid comedy-of-errors and ridged with a number of
increasingly creepy horror elements, with the use of the latter being one of
the most impressive features of the book. Stroud makes use of minimalistic,
Hitchcock-type storytelling, constantly threatening to show you what's in the
bag rather than actually doing it. Vague descriptions and the reader's fear of
the unknown do most of the dirty work to produce spine-ascending chills at
regular intervals.
If I had any complaints about Niceville, it would have to be the
inconsistent characterization. Including 21 fully fleshed-out characters could
result in a tome more usable as a murder weapon
than reading material, but several characters feel like rushed,
two-dimensional, caricatured plot devices more than actual people. Though
Stroud's prose makes them fun nonetheless, switching from the more
fully-realized characters to flatter characters was sometimes jarring enough to
break my immersion in the book. Despite weighing in at over 400 pages, Stroud’s
pacing is brisk enough that hours can pass in a blur while the reader investigates
the labyrinthine events of his yarn.
Niceville
is an inventive little gumbo of classic narrative elements, strung together in
a way that’s creative enough to satisfy even the most cynical of readers.
Events and people gradually form a complex web, like clues a crime investigator
might pin on a bulletin board and connect with red yarn, stringing you along
from one chapter to another. You’ll soon find yourself another 150 pages in and
wondering where the time has gone. Well-paced, wittily written, and
meticulously thought out, Niceville
is definitely worth a look for any fans of horror, noir, comedy, or just plain
good writing.
- Vincent Smith
Vincent Smith is a taoist, aspiring writer, and dyed-in-the-wool psychology geek at the University of Guelph. You can find his writing on video games, comics, movies, and all things geek over at The Rogue's Gallery.
- Vincent Smith
Vincent Smith is a taoist, aspiring writer, and dyed-in-the-wool psychology geek at the University of Guelph. You can find his writing on video games, comics, movies, and all things geek over at The Rogue's Gallery.
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