Review: Out On the Rim

I picked up a somewhat beat-up first edition hardcover of this book last summer for a dollar at a street fair. I saw the author's name and thought hmm, that does ring a bell. I looked at the back cover, and it had blurbs from Elmore Leonard, Robert B Parker, Donald Westlake and McBain. All ranged from glowing to rhapsodic. Wow, I thought, there's got to be something to this. Then a zillion books interfered until yesterday, when I needed something different.

At the tail end of WWII, Booth Stallings was a 19 year old budding terrorism expert. If only because he actually learned bombs and other related activities while in combat. During that time, he worked a deal with Alejandro Espiritu, a Filipino soldier maybe a couple of years older. It was a deal that ended with a whole lot of other people dead, except for Booth and "Al". Then they parted ways and never saw each other again....

Flash forward 41 years. It's 1986 and Stallings, who has a book on terrorism to his credit, has just been canned from the military. Only hours after his unceremonious firing, he's approached by Harry Crites, a poet (of all things) about a little bit of business: help a rebel leader in the Phillipines get to Hong Kong safely into forced pensioned exile, and Stallings will get a cut of the cool five million dollars at stake.

Through a series of twists, turns, and other foibles, the following characters are brought into the mix: Otherguy Overby, con man extraordinaire; Georgia Blue, ex-Secret Service agent; Artie Wu, a massive Chinese-American who is pretender to the throne (as the illegitimate son of the illegitimate daughter of the Emperor of China, a connection that harkens back to a song in the Gershwins' 'Of Thee I Sing') and Wu's friend and partner Quincy Durant, usually known as "That F**king Durant."

They get together and work the gig, double-crossing each other and others, getting into loads of trouble. Who will get the five million dollars? Will anyone? And does it even exist in the first place?

Wow, what a plot, that's the first thing. Constantly shifting and keeping me on my toes. Then there are the characters, especially Wu and Durant, who have to be among the coolest confidence men in all of crime fiction. Every time they showed up, I was riveted.

Thomas's dialogue crackles, and is often ironic, biting, and hilarious. He just had an ear for these things.

So in short? I loved this book, dammit. And as I complained to a friend yesterday, it was such a pity that a writer of this talent had been limited to obscurity when those guys who blurbed him are among the creme de la creme. So what of Ross Thomas? He'd won an Edgar for first novel and for best Novel. He wrote political thrillers, very much of the then-current times--Cold War and the effects. OUT ON THE RIM does seem slightly dated. But no matter. It is fabulous.

And the good news is, it's going to be reissued. It seems that St. Martin's Minotaur agrees with me that it's a shame Thomas has been languishing in out of print hell since his death in 1995, so starting next month, two books--OUT ON THE RIM and the Edgar award winning BRIARPATCH--will be released in trade paperback format. Two more books will follow in May.

You better believe I'll be reading the rest of Thomas's output. I'm especially looking forward to further adventures of Wu and Durant, and I've been told that CHINAMAN'S CHANCE, published in 1978, is one of his best books. I simply cannot wait.

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Sarah - RAM

Book Review: Out On the Rim