Review: Gone to Dust

Gone to Dust by Matt Goldman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I get the sense I’d like Goldman if I met him. There’s a light humor here, and I get the impression he’s a likeable guy from the strong record he has as a sit-com writer. If I knew him, I might find positive things to say about his book. But, I don’t know him, and I have to own up that I don’t think much of this one.

This is a book built on genre conventions and gimmicks. The genre is mystery, mostly of the cozy variety rather than noir, and the gimmicks are fairly thin.

First, we get a Private Eye protagonist who’s both Jewish, by descent, and Norwegian, by virtue of living in Minneapolis for generations. He’s called Nils Shapiro, which has a nice ring to it, but feels like a gimmick to give a generally flat character some substance.

Then we get an antagonist who’s aware of how investigations work, so he (or possibly she) has contaminated a murder scene with carpet-vacuum detritus to prevent any DNA testing.

Along the way, there are several characters with catchy stories: the suspect who gets a “hands off“ from the FBI since he’s cooperating in an investigation of Somali warlords, the bi-racial young woman who’s returned to befriend the mother who gave her up for adoption years before, and the ex-wife who’s beautiful, perfect, still-unattached, and yet unattainable.

The mystery is tangled, which is a good thing, but it’s also deeply contrived. For long parts we get things tilted toward one suspect, then to another. That’s the genre, and I get it, and I’m sure many do a worse job than Goldman.

What wears on me, though, is that while I like Nils well enough, I don’t like the fundamental narcissism of the story. He’s the hired gun, but somehow it always turns out to be about him. The woman whose best friend/recently rediscovered biological mother has just been killed? Well, she’s got time for a romance and a little psychotherapy even before the funeral. The wife who’s got everything? She doesn’t want to move on, and she’s happy to support Nils financially, emotionally, and even sexually when he’s down. The blousy, drunken nurse who’s hoping to make her fortune by marrying the wealthy asshole? She takes time out to tease Nils that he and her green-eyed friend are in love. And the big break in the case? That’s because Nils can play Jewish geography with anyone in Minneapolis.

In that light, this recalls the worst of Mickey Spillane, where the tough guy hero upholds some otherwise forgotten standard of quiet self-reliance and somehow still has all the great women after him. Nils is more fun than Mike Hammer, but if that’s your standard, we’re all in trouble.

To be fair, some of the gimmicks do spice up the conventions, and the mystery does bounce from possibility to possibility. This could be worse, but I can’t recommend it to folks (like me) who prefer their mysteries with the creative edginess of noir.


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