a review of
Goofy Foot : An Alex Rasmussen Mystery
by David Daniel
ISBN: 0312323492
Format: Hardcover, 288pp
St. Martin's Minotaur, $23.95
By Tim Trask
Good detective novels remind us what human beings are capable of doing in darkness. They’re tales designed to see beneath the calm surface of everyday life into the dark labyrinth of the human soul. We would all be good people, to torque the words of Flannery O’Connor’s Misfit, if there were someone there to shoot us every minute of our lives. David Daniel’s third Alex Rasmussen mystery, Goofy Foot, takes account of these minutes of freedom in which one character in particular indulges in behavior that is hard to figure precisely because it does not fit our preconceptions of civilized life, preconceptions we hold onto with the same desperation that made Ishmael hold onto Queequeg’s casket after Moby Dick sank The Pequod.
Goofy Foot is a surfing term that denotes a right-foot-forward stance on a board–the foot equivalent of left-handed. In this book, it means more. Not only is it the name of the boat owned by a surfer nicknamed “Red Dog,” but it also means, “how you sometimes get the intuitive stuff . . . inklings” (119). Alex Rasmussen is in a line of work that requires both the reasoning powers of Sherlock Holmes and the intuitive insight of Sam Spade, both the left and the right brain.
Like most of his literary elder brothers, Rasmussen is one acquainted with evil, though he tries to avoid practicing it himself; however, he’s not above bending the law when convenient. For example, at the beginning of this book a sawed-off shotgun appears, and, well, you know the rule of dramatic writing according to Chekov: "If a gun hangs from the wall in the first act of the a play, it must fire in the last.” Carrying a sawed-off shotgun is a serious federal offense, yet Rasmussen carries it into the final act of this drama. Does it get fired in the last scene? Read the book to see whether Daniel follows Chekov’s rule.
This drama starts off in the usual way, with a woman paying a visit to Rasmussen’s ill-furnished office in an old building in a bleak part of downtown Lowell, Massachusetts. But this is not an urban story. The woman, Paula Jensen, is from a nice suburb, Apple Valley, a name that hints of orchards over which projects for the middle class have been erected. The main setting of the story, however, is a summer resort town between Scituate and Plymouth called Standish. Mayflower territory. America’s home town.
Paula Jensen’s daughter from a previous marriage, Shel (for Michelle) Nickerson, is missing along with her father, a native of Standish, and Rasmussen, not too busy with pressing cases, takes on the job of finding her. At first, it sounds easy, and Rasmussen approaches the job casually, as does the Police Chief of Standish, a townie named Delcastro.
If PIs as a breed don’t already have a motto, I would suggest they adopt Dubito, ergo sum. They have to doubt everything they see, doubt everyone’s story. Most of the time, they have to offer some pretense of trust, however, and one of the main tensions of a good mystery, one shared by both the PI and the reader, comes from the requirement to make distinctions between that which is to be trusted and that which is to be doubted. The best tool for making this discrimination is Occam’s Razor. This is especially true of an age in which the temptation to see conspiracy is as strong as it is in ours. Goofy Foot moves from what appears to be a simple case to an entangled mess that makes it appear that everyone is involved. America’s home town is entirely evil! The police chief and his officers, the legendary surfer dude, Shel’s father’s classmates, her stepfather, and all the parents of Standish, many of whom have problems with alcohol and drugs, seem involved. The story never quite implicates the school committee or The Mayflower Society, but there’s innuendo that could lead a careless reader down that road.
In the best part of this book, Alex Rasmussen begins to doubt himself. One of Daniel’s most cleverly conceived characters is a man named Carvalho who has lost himself in conspiracy theory partly because he’s lost one of his own daughters and partly because of an earlier missing girl case in which the entire cosmos appears to be involved. These are Rasmussen’s thoughts on the case before him: “Was I blowing a solo as warped and wiggy as old man Carvalho’s? I might as well, if I didn’t have something more concrete than paranoia to back it.”
Fortunately for himself, his client, and all but one character in the book, Rasmussen overcomes his self-doubt. “I wiped the rain from my face, walked over to the gate, and put my eyes to work.” The eyes, private or not, have to be worked to pierce the surface, the illusion, and get at the truth. Carvalho is a foil, not a mirror, and all that is wrong with him makes it clear to us what is right with Rasmussen.
Goofy Foot is a thoughtful addition to the world of (semi) hardboiled detective mysteries. In addition to being a good read, proffering the pleasures of Rasmussen’s hard-won one-liners and an entertaining view of a fictional town named for a Puritan Captain best known for his failed courtship, it goes to the heart of human greed and makes a statement about values without ever hinting at a moral.
Copyright © 2004
Posted February 2004