Slapstick is a style of humor involving exaggerated physical activity which exceeds the boundaries of common sense. – Wikipedia
Noir Fiction is about losers, not private eyes. – Otto Penzler, author.
Slap Noir starts off perfectly blending slapstick and mystery as the reader jumps from scene to scene – culminating in an explosion, a wreck, a shooting, a heart attack, and a little girl crying for reasons unknown. It is revealed that five of the most prominent members of a small West Texas town are dead – shot by one another at their weekly poker game and then blown up in a gas station explosion. What happened? Why? What instigated the violence? Was there a 6th person? What did the little girl, daughter of one of the dead men, see? What secrets will come out in the ensuing investigation?
Side trip: I knew the author, known to me only as “Bigboy,” when I was a little girl. He and my dad played softball and drank beer together in Austin in the early 1970’s. At some point he disappeared, as adults do, and then one day I was being dragged off to see the movie Bigboy left Austin to make – Roadie. It was a really weird movie starring Meatloaf, Alice Cooper, and Blondie. I haven’t watched since that initial viewing in a nearly empty theater, but I remember a lot of it. It has a 17% on Rotten Tomatoes, but I think it’s worth watching. Later I learned that Bigboy is a co-founder of the E! network and was it’s head writer for many years. This struck me as much stranger than Roadie. I can’t claim that knowing someone for a few years and from the perspective of being a kid makes one an expert, but Slap Noir seems more true to Bigboy than E!.
After the murder/explosion, we get to know the inhabitants of the west Texas town of Achilles on July 31, 1966. This date is significant, because the very next day, Charles Whitman went on a shooting spree from the University of Texas Clock Tower (the first mass school shooting in the US) in Austin. This very real event, along with the Viet Nam War as background noise, ground the surreal events of Slap Noir in reality. As the story picks up speed, the physical humor becomes more exaggerated and more lethal. In Greek tragedy, hubris is excessive pride found in the Hero. In Achiles, hubris is excessive pride found in murderous idiots. In the end, only a few people know how empty and ridiculous the whole series of events had been, and then it’s just another secret festering in a small town.
True to Bigboy’s roots in film and television, Slap Noir would make a great season of television. It’s a visual book, and the west Texas landscape would make a great setting.
