In her latest book, Inga Vespa pairs another couple of outsiders to investigate a murder, while digging around among social issues of the twentieth century. In her debut, The Long, Long Afternoon, we had a stirring of civil rights, and the murder investigated by a disgraced cop and the African American maid who’s a key witness. It’s 1959 and so there’s misogyny as well, particularly in this strait-laced California suburb.
Moving on a decade This Wild, Wild Country takes us to Boldville, New Mexico, a town out of the Wild West with it’s faded shop fronts, a blink and you’ve missed it sort of place, that keeps going because of local mining interests. Once upon a time it had it’s share of gold-rush opportunists, but now it’s where Glitter – real-name Lauren Weiland – wants to set up a counterculture commune.
Glitter lives with her boyfriend Ziggy on a hippy-decorated bus which she’s parked by the cabin her mother used to rent out behind the family hotel, a little out of town. With a few friends they hope the commune will catch on and expand. The little group are mostly college drop-outs, flower children who are anti-war and full of new ideas and ideals that put them outside of society. The town folk are wary of them, particularly when Dutch and a couple of his motor cycle gang move in. The gang has a constant supply of drugs and bring an air of menace. If only Ziggy wasn’t quite so keen to keep them onside.
After a particularly wild night, Glitter wakes up to find her cousin, Mike, dead from a skull fracture. Sheriff Nickel writes the death off as an accident while under the influence, but Glitter knew Mike wasn’t the kind of guy to take the kind of hard drugs found in his pocket. Not surprisingly no one will take her seriously.
While all this is going on, Joanna Riley is on the run. She has left her bully of a husband, sporting bruises she attempts to conceal. With only two hundred dollars and not much gas in the car, she escapes Albuquerque and winds up in Boldville, where she finds Stovers Hotel, the hostelry belonging to Glitter’s mother. A former police officer, and married to another, Joanna’s cop senses are on alert when she hears about the mysterious death, witnessing the family’s grief, and begins to ask questions.
The road is a ribbon wrapping a gift never given. A million stars twinkle overhead. Dust fills her lungs and cleans away the taste of blood. The Datsun’s headlights pick out cactus ghosts and the spiky crowns of agave plants. Somewhere she’s read that the Native Americans use agave sap as a balm. But she cannot bring herself to stop and try some on her arm.
The needle’s hitting eighty. She will never get far enough. He’ll find her. If she drives to Canada, he’ll come after her. And the tank is already running low.
The story also flips back to the 1930s, where Cordelia Stover is desperate: a hotel that’s losing money, a Depression that has lost her even more, and a young daughter to raise on her own. When she comes across a secret, she heads off for the hills on a borrowed mule, hoping for a windfall.
This Wild, Wild Country is a brilliant mystery that builds to an action-packed sequence of events towards the end, where, eventually, all is revealed. Inga Vespa ticks all the boxes for a great crime novel, particularly with two young heroines on a quest to uncover the truth, while the whole town seems to be against them – even the law. The book is also peopled with interesting minor characters: the menacing sheriff; the posturing mayor; Lonan, Cordelia’s Native American side-kick. It’s easy to imagine this novel as a movie, which could be down the evocative setting.
But there’s a lot more going on here. There’s all the issues raised by the counterculture movement and its ideals of freedom, love and peace, but the misogyny that pervades the establishment is here too – women taken advantage of quite horrifically. There’s racism in the way business interests are at odds with those of the local Native Americans as well as issues around power and the corruption that brings. So quite a lot going on, but not at the expense of character development or a gripping storyline. So it’s a four-and-a-half star read from me.
Judith McKinnon 