Get a Taste of Country Noir in 'Tomato Red'

Review: TOMATO RED (Plume 2000)
(to be reissued by Busted Flush Press in Sept. 2010)
Author: Daniel Woodrell

If you're of a mind to read a crime fiction novel that takes you off the beaten path (setting-wise and literary-wise), with prose that seems to sing to you with a rhythm all its own, and even features an opening sentence a mind-blowing 250 words long, you might take joy in reading TOMATO RED by Daniel Woodrell.

The story opens with Sammy, a drifter and criminal of the two-bit sort, breaking and entering a fancy house in (of all places) West Table, Mo. Sammy, who's coming down off a lost weekend of drug use and debauchery, drifts off to sleep in a chair. (No one said Sammy was the sharpest tool in the drawer.) When he awakes he's confronted by two young people -- a man named Jason who's too beautiful to exist and a woman named Jamalee with hair "a shade of red that would be natural on something growing in a garden but not on a person's head." Naturally, he nicknames this woman Tomato Red and uses clever phrases to describe the rest of her. Phrases concatenated to form sentences like, "She sported lipstick that I'd call graveyard black, and her fingernails could've been dead-baby blue."

Seems Jason and Jamalee live on the wrong side of the tracks in Venus Holler, which (as Sammy puts it) "was the most low-life part of town, so I already knew where it was. ... I felt instantly at home." It's a place from which Jamalee would like to escape, taking Jason with her. And Sammy can tag along as their protection. (The first question Jamalee asks Sammy when he wakes up is, "Are you dangerous?" She makes it sound like an interview question, rather than a concern.)

The threesome hang together, but all is not sweetness and light in their Ozarks setting. They run afoul of West Table, Mo., society's conventions. Doesn't help that Jamalee's mother, um, entertains men for a living. Entertains them at her house at all hours and in every possible manner.

Despite the patina of hope that keeps the threesome moving toward their goal of leaving the Holler, a situation arises that threatens their ambitions.

Because, you know, mean streets can turn out to be gravelly roads that lead down into places like the Holler, as well as desolate coves. Places where people end up facedown dead in water unfit for swimming.

And when you live on the wrong side of town, it don't matter whether that wrong side is in New York City or West Table, Mo. The justice for crimes committed against the poor is the same all over. Which is to say such justice can be illusive.

When faced with such a situation, those affected try to take matters into their own hands. Needless to say, this all leads to nothing good.

Written in well-crafted prose imbued with genuine Ozarks sensibility, TOMATO RED stands out as great literature and thought-provoking noir.