Pocket Star, 224 pages, digital, $0.99

If you take noir, amp up the violence, stream down the prose, and pump it so full of brutality and emotional grit that reading it becomes an uncomfortable experience, you’ll start approximating the space occupied by Benjamin Whitmer’s Pike. Originally published in 2010 by Switchblade, Pike became available in digital format in April of 2016, and that means a new wave of crime fans and readers who missed it the first time around now have a chance to discover one of the strongest noirs of this decade and a voice that stands at the pinnacle of contemporary crime fiction.

Douglas Pike had the kind of youth that people don’t talk about, and what he saw and did in his past is still at his core despite the fact that he has reformed a bit and his wildest, most dangerous days seem to be over. Older and full of scars, Pike now spends his uneventful days in his Appalachian hometown, trying hard to stay out of trouble and working odd jobs with his partner, Rory, an amateur boxer. That relative stability is shattered when Pike’s estranged daughter overdoses and he’s forced to take in his 12-year-old granddaughter, Wendy, and her tiny, ferocious cat. The two have strong personalities and getting along doesn’t come naturally, but they try their best. While they work on getting along, Derrick Kreiger, a corrupt Cincinnati cop, sets his eyes on the young girl, so Pike and Rory head to Cincinnati to learn as much as they can about the cop and to investigate the shady death of Pike’s daughter. What follows is a brutal narrative about doing very bad things for all the right reasons in a world full of junkies, predators, secret agendas, and broken people.

Whitmer has a knack for creating atmosphere, and what he creates is the kind of atmosphere you find in a juke joint at midnight-thirty seconds before an angry drunk comes at you with a kitchen knife. Simply put, no other crime author currently working does violence with the natural ease and undeniable authenticity that Whitmer brings to the table. From boxing matches to deaths by gun, Pike is packed with the nonchalance brutality of real life and the kind of viciousness only desperate people pushed too far are capable of delivering:

“He grabbed the boys knife hand, cranked the wrist until he heard a crunch. Then slipped his hand into his brass knuckles and hammered the boy’s oval face until his legs crumbled like sandstone. Then yanked him up by his broken wrist, feeling the play in his separated bones. Pike worked on his teeth, smashing them into roughs, jerking the boy into his fist onto his broken wrist had separated entirely.”

Many elements make this novel a standout, but perhaps the two that deserve the most attention are economy of language and meticulousness. The opening paragraph of every chapter in Pike is a small class on how to simultaneously place the reader in a physical location and a state of mind. Whitemer delivers a lot of information in a very limited space, and the entire narrative shares this. Pike is a rarity: a relatively short novel whose weight and depth rival those 600-page monsters we are supposed to call literature and a pure, straightforward, bone-crushing noir that knocks literary fiction on its ass:

“Pike cruises Mulberry Street in slow motion, one hand draped over the steering well, his thin gray eyes scratching at the crumpled Over-the-Rhine street. The cracks yawning up out of the earth, through the foundations of the narrow Victorians. The small lawns wasted with broken glass and leaking garbage. The snow streaked yellow with piss. He passes a gang of boys standing on a corner, their hot black eyes sticking to him like tar. He drives another block, finds the address he’s looking for.”

There are novels and then there are reading experiences that permanently invade the interstitial space between your ribs and the last working chunk of your heart, and Pike belongs to the latter group. At once unexpectedly touching and unnervingly vicious, the feelings and actions found in this novel seemed pulled from the worst moments of real life. That authenticity is hard to find, and when you take into account that this is a debut novel and not the best offering from a seasoned author with a dozen novels under his belt, the verdict is clear: Benjamin Whitmer is one of the strongest, most distinctive voices in modern noir. That he delivered on that promised and built his name even further with Cry Father, which was published in late 2014, is perfect confirmation of that. Go read both now.

—

Gabino Iglesias is a writer, journalist, and book reviewer living in Austin, TX. He’s the author of Zero Saints, Gutmouth, Hungry Darkness, and a few other things no one will ever read. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.