The Extinction Event

Ernest Hemingway wrote a novel called Across the River and Into the Trees.  It is a well crafted novel centered around a U.S. army colonel near retirement and death and focuses on selected flashbacks while he spends a weekend with his much younger lover, an Italian princess.  His novel is tender and candid and draws readers into the limited world of the colonel and his princess as they block out the fading war, his years of combat, and the social struggle they have as a couple.  In fairness, it is a classic Hemingway novel--sparse in the words on the page but rich in emotion and imagery.

There have been few authors since Hemingway who could captivate imagination, defy literary norms, and live out a powerful and effective career as a a writer.  David Black is not Hemingway.

His recent crime thriller The Extinction Event shares only two things with the work of Hemingway (specifically Across the River and Into the Trees).  A love affair between a man in the twilight of his life and a much, much younger woman, and sparse language.  Fortunately for those of us keen on trying out Black's novel, the language is sparse and the book ends quickly.  As for the affair, well, it comes across as an indulgent fantasy of an old man.  The novel overall is an indulgent romp through tired crime novel cliches.  It was obvious, predictable, and boring.

The Extinction Event centers on lead character, lawyer, Jack Slidwell who is, apparently, a super bright guy from a poor family who made it through law school working on the docks and chumming in the red light district of Mycenae, New York.  After he finds his partner and a prostitute dead in a hotel room he soon finds himself on the run--beautiful law firm employee Caroline at his side--from an unknown entity desperate to hide the truth. 

Black skirts the social issues that must dominate aspects of life in the smaller cities on the East coast; the influence and presence of "established" families trenched in their old money and name that acts as a golden ticket versus the ambitious professionals doing their best to make their own name.  But it is forced, a theme that is so rich and available is shoehorned in to give the protagonist something else to fight against.  In general I found most elements of the novel forced:  the surgery from Caroline's old life that left her, most likely sterile, attempts to draw imagery from impending storms and oddities of nature, the constant comparisons between plants and wounds with the human libido and genitalia, the vague relationship and interchange with between various family members amongst themselves...

The novel is more like "The Forced Event"--it never flows, never surprises you, and never makes you rush back to pick up where you left off.