Christopher Chambers (1)

Take a dash of George Pelecanos’s riff on life on the slick and harsh streets of Southeast Washington DC, crank in a shot of James Ellroy’s staccato narratives, pass that mix into the hands of Dickie Cornish, the homeless wannabe private eye, and you get a more realistically sharp snapshot of life in DC than is typically reflected in our imagination or on national media. Cornish finds himself bullied, harassed, pressured and threatened to begin the drudge-like effort of finding out who show more is kidnapping and murdering children of one of the weakest politically and economically segments of society-the multiethnic urban poor. To add to the pressure the recently appointed DC Police Chief grants Dickie a “provisional private investigator license ” to help her solve this problem and try to chip away at some of the more nasty elements of local criminal activity where systemic racism, politics and degradation are near natural attributes.
Christopher Chambers, in this second Dickie Cornish story, very effectively churns the chaos of crime, racism, corruption and poverty among the subsistence less members of Southeast Washington into an intense and often disheartening narrative of life, death and getting along at the lower edges of America’s central political maelstrom- Washington DC.. show less

I requested Scavenger as an ARC because it featured a "homeless detective", and that was intriguing. Dickie Cornish is an engaging and thought-provoking character who is a mess from drugs, alcohol, difficult times and mental illness. He finds something in his scavenging, and that gives him value in higher circles. He is enlisted to investigate in the homeless areas of Washington, DC. With advanced medications, they get him cleaned up and sober, and he proceeds to immerse us in a gritty show more environment that few of us normally see, much less experience.

Such potential for a great story! Unfortunately, trying to figure out the author's dialect portrayals, idiosyncratic Spanish (untranslated) and urban slang was way too much work. Authors like Walter Mosley use this technique in an easily digestible way that keeps the pages flying, but Christopher Chambers is too wed to an idea of realism that is frustratingly obstructive from the get-go.

I read an interview with him (Publishers Weekly) in which he acknowledges the problem:

"Wading into a bleak, unfamiliar place peopled by broken folk who speak slang, or, if immigrants, a melange of their tongue and English, is scary. If I made it arduous for some, I apologize. Scary is good. Arduous is not so good. Still, readers doing a little more work might engender a pay off down line."

Some readers have enjoyed the payoff, but it wasn't enough for me to recommend this one. Too bad. show less

While it took a little time to get into the flow of the narrative style and multilingual dialogue, once it got going, I found Scavenger to be a pretty wild ride. Granted, second person narration isn't for everyone. However, the choice seemed appropriate in that it immediate places the reader on the level of our drug addicted and homeless, but nevertheless gifted protagonist Dickie Cornish.
Are some of the plot points implausible, as suggested by another review featured here? Perhaps. But show more this is obvious noir, where implausibility is baked in - if the mystery was straightforward, we wouldn't need an army of overlooked to solve it for us. In fact, the plot hinges on this distinction; are we meant to believe the outlandish warnings of those we typically overlook, or the reassurances of the wealthy and powerful who may be pulling strings we cannot see?
If you're willing to give this story a few chapters to introduce its rhythm to you, and maybe google a few key Spanish phrases (assuming you are not already familiar), the ride is worth the investment. Most reminiscent for me of George Pelecanos and Richard Price (and of course The Wire since they both contributed heavily), with some of the underlying rage at the conspiratorial failings of the government and its sanctioned agents, as found in Don Winslow and James Elroy. show less

Scavenger by Christopher Chambers is a compelling book for several reasons. A wrongly accused man, twisty mystery, and a look at parts of society often overlooked (often intentionally over the past four years especially, but not limited to the orange menace).

The language of the streets will make parts of the book a slower read for many of us, but with a few exceptions I had to look up I could contextually make sense of most of it. I would argue that it is well worth the work making sense of show more the writing, maybe that attention to detail will carry over into some attention to the homeless, the mentally ill, and those battling addictions. If taking the time to understand what they are saying makes the reader even a little more attentive to the ills of society, it is time well spent. Unless you're like one reviewer who just admits that he finds those speaking like that not "worth one wit" of care or compassion. You can translate that dog whistle for yourself.

The pace, once you're more comfortable with the dialogue, is brisk, with a lot of nice twists and turns. The mystery part of this book works very well. I would stop short of saying you'll be totally surprised, especially if you read a lot of these types of books, but the ending isn't broadcast so early that you lose interest in the how of the resolution.

Recommended for those who like some social impact with their mysteries and don't mind doing a small amount of work for the reward.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via LibraryThing Early Reviewers. show less