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Long-suffering hero takes it all in stride Rough Stuff
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Published: March 16, 2008
THE DEATH TRUST. By David Rollins. Bantam. 416 pages. $24.
This story begins a year ago in a gritty, Baghdad urban assault as Sgt. Peyton Scott and associates are ambushed in the street. Chapter 2 shifts to last week in Germany, and we're treated to an impeccable description of the aerobatic sailplane flight of Peyton's father, Gen. Abraham Scott. In both scenes, the end result is violent and graphic death. Chapter 3 brings a change in tone and point of view as The Death Trust becomes the first-person, present-tense account of Special Agent Maj. Vin Cooper as he is awakened, hung-over, the morning after a binge night celebrating the finalization of his divorce. The tone is immediately irreverent -- and I mean that in a good way. Unlike traditional first-person detective novels narrated by unkempt, burned out, has-beens, The Death Trust is decidedly non-noir.
Vin is deep into a year-long, alcohol-soaked fall from grace as a capable U.S. Air Force detective when he is assigned to investigate Maj. Scott's death. The success of this assignment, he is informed, will determine his future as an investigator or signal the end of his career. Despite the hangover, a toothache and the painful memory of discovering his ex-wife and marriage counselor in mid-tryst, Vin maintains his composure through a session of scalding verbal abuse from his commanding officer. While he stands at poker-faced attention, internally responding to the insults with silent Seinfeldian ripostes, we begin to sympathize with this character and glimpse the events that led to his present predicament.
Vin's devil-may-care attitude is as evident in his private thoughts as it is in his bons mots, and while both are constant sources of humor and insight into Vin's character, they are never so odd or so funny as to render The Death Trust a humor story.
Upon his arrival in Germany, Vin is assailed by the preliminary investigator, Special Agent Anna Masters. Anna, a stickler for protocol, quickly learns that Vin has no use for standard operating procedures. The inevitable result is friction between the two -- and the first phase of a unique rendition of the formulaic romance. Yes, Anna is adorable and innocently naive, and yes, Vin is an untamed rogue who eschews authority. And yes, this unshaven, disheveled and jaded rascal who refuses to comply with her expectations eventually begins to earn Anna's trust and respect. Mutual affection is not far behind. But where the majority of romance stories focus on the female character's point of view, this author invokes artistic license to reverse the recipe, and we perceive the pair's transformation from antagonists to lovers through the male narrator's eyes.
But romance does not overpower plot, the intricacies of which are rendered by an author who is a tight fiction technician who presents his work with a looseness of style that belies his dedication to his craft. Simultaneously developed on many levels, The Death Trust alternately comes across as Apocalypse Now and Felix the Cat. Even when Vin is severely beaten, the wise-cracks never let up.
We watch in horror as he is groin-kicked, shot, slapped, mugged and drugged. We smile and shake our heads as this Air Force officer, who is terrified of flying, suffers panic attacks when forced into the air, and we watch in amusement as he is raped by a beautiful, surgically augmented woman of dubious intent. Despite the chaos of his personal life, Vin pursues leads with the single-mindedness of a bulldog, all while dealing with his toothache, his alcoholism, the loss of his wife, his ruined reputation, and the temptations and distractions of a line-up of well-endowed, Bond movie-model characters who cross his path.
Ultimately, Vin learns of the decades-long business strategy of the military-industrial complex, whose economy is based on using war as a proving grounds for weapons created in the private sector and sold on the world market. This mother of all conspiracies is so involved as to require a pages-long Perry Mason monologue delivered by a high-ranking madman to explain its workings. And though the concept is developed to the point of believability, for me, the impetus to continue reading lay more in the author's treatment of his main character than in understanding the motives and actions of the villains. In the end, all I really wanted to know were the basics: Does Vin survive? Does he get his toothache fixed? Does he forgive his ex-wife? Does he overcome his fear of flying? And does he get the girl?
■ Steven Beach is a writer who lives in Lawsonville.
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