Daniel Judson’s The Darkest Place
At some point we borrowed the word noir from the French and we’re showing no signs of giving the word back. The term migrated from film to books and while Hollywood drifts further from its roots, books are coming full circle. THE DARKEST PLACE draws on the classic elements of fiction rooted in the emotional juxtaposition of bad things happening to people in bad places. Nothing is more threatening in vintage noir than the hero’s own weakness.
THE DARKEST PLACE is set on Long Island’s East End close to the glamor of the Hamptons yet far removed from the playground of the wealthy. It’s winter and it’s cold: young men are dying, their bodies floating in scenic bays and private lakes. The local cops are pushing the idea that the boys are victims of bad judgment, swimming while drunk despite the weather. Like many theories this one begins to unravel as the body count rises.
The plot serves as a platform for the author to explore the thematic notion of grief and loss. Tommy Miller is a local boy with a bum knee and a need to prove himself. Deke Kane lost his son to drowning and the metaphor of sinking beneath the waves defines Kane and his state of mind. Private Investigator Reggie Clay is conflicted about his line of work while his boss, Ned Gregor, demands a kind of moral rigor that makes the business of crime solving more complicated than it would be otherwise. Into this world of broken men comes Colette Auster. She is not conflicted about seizing the main chance and understands human weakness the way a botanist undertands plant life.
To make this novel work the author has drawn from literary sources larger than the genre. The film noir was influenced by the German directors like Fritz Lang in look and feel, THE DARKEST PLACE creates a mood and atmosphere more reminiscent of Kafka than Raymond Chandler. This puts the internal conflicts of the characters at odds with the story’s events as each of them suffer consequences while questioning the reality of cause and effect. Colette’s character remains aloof, serving as a ground for the charged emotions of the others. At times the perilous disconnect between perception and reality creates frustration rather than tension, forcing the reader to judge for themselves whether or not the novel’s action meshes with the characters’ response. The author has something larger in play, and he has the skill and passion to push the narrative beyond the ordinary.
As crime novels go THE DARKEST PLACE blurs the focus on plot to explore the damaged psyches of the principal characters. The story’s climax fits with the novel’s construct that loss robs its victims of the human ability for self preservation, creating a vulnerability that is more compelling than any external threat. Daniel Judson respects the conventions of crime fiction while infusing his story with raw despair, delivering on the promise to find the place where the physical trumps the metaphysical, where death, so seductive in grief, is no longer welcome.