Two Times the Plot but Half the Writing: Just Doesn't Work
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Banes & Noble thinks:
Author: Kathleen O'Neill Gear Title: Bone Walker Genre: mystery
Within the next month I celebrate a milestone: a twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Twenty-five plus years spent with the same person does lots of things to one's life; most of them (in my experience) on the positive side of the ledger. Some of those things are the stuff of legend; others are the butt of jokes. One of the latter is a pretty common phenomenon: the ability to complete one's partner's sentences, even his/her thoughts at times. The verbal shorthand that comes of a long-term relationship is sometimes mistaken for lack of communication -- to outside observers it seems that the partners only mumble a few disjoint words. For those of us on the inside, though, it's a highly nuanced near-telepathic conversation replete with multi-layered shades of meaning. Ms scmrak made me write that last with a single raised eyebrow -- and you never even noticed!
So we're agreed that partners with a long history can communicate in seemingly disjoint phrases; the colors of meaning implicit to the relationship; right?
That's what's wrong with the collaboration of Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neal Gear in their novel Bone Walker: those of us on the outside miss big chunks of the tacit conversation that makes up their work.
Double Your Plotting, Double Your Fun?
There's never any doubt that Bone Walker is the work of two writers. Twin story lines track simultaneously, alternating chapter-by-chapter or section-by-section. The book devolves because of this into an endless series of cliff-hangers as narration switches from one plot line to the other.
Plot number one is present-day New Mexico. An archaeologist has been murdered at Chaco Canyon, those quintessential Anasazi ruins far up on the Colorado Plateau. The treatment of Dale Robertson's body points to Native American witchcraft (a familiar enough subject for Tony Hillerman fans). The dead man's adoptive son, archaeologist William "Dusty" Stewart, forces the FBI to allow him to help excavate the ruin where Dale's body was buried; melding archaeology with crime-scene investigation. Dusty's accompanied by a Seneca Indian anthropologist from Canada, Dr. Maureen Cole; the few others on the scene are members of Dale's digging crew, FBI agents, and National Park personnel.
Not-so-cryptic clues point to a dark period decades past, when the mother who abandoned Dusty was a young archaeologist working with her husband and Dale on a dig in Chaco. Ruth Ann Sullivan disappeared in the company of yet another archaeologist; Carter Hawsworth; both went on to become world-renowned... what else, archaelogists. Now, nearly forty years later, all those players have been reassembled; recalled to Chaco Canyon by someone claiming to be the Puebloan wolf-witch Kwewur. There will be, we can assume, more deaths...
Parallel to the modern story is a tale of Anasazi life seven hundred years gone: the time period is the waning days of the mysterious Anasazi empire. War chief Browser and his sub-chief, the beauteous Catkin, race from abandoned Anasazi village to abandoned Anasazi village, sometimes allying themselves with mortal enemies and sometimes battling fiercely with former friends. Their little band is -- we eventually determine -- seeking an evil witch named Two Hearts, but twin Anasazi versions of Pamela Anderson (one [Obsidian] sort of good, the other [Shadow] quite evil) stand in their way. The titular Bone Walker is a six-year-old child, the daughter of Shadow and granddaughter of Two Hearts. There's no mention of a father.
Fierce battles erupt among the various clans -- Fire Dogs, Mogollon (who may be the same as the Fire Dogs; it's unclear), Made People, and First People -- as Browser and his motley crew sneak, fight, and trick their way toward the kiva where Two Hearts lies near death, his body broken from the last time Browser got near him with a war club. Their foes -- the White Moccasins, who may or may not be the same as the First People -- are just as tricky and sneaky, and almost as good fighters.
The two stories thunder neck-and-neck to a photo finish, although the Gears seem loath to make it clear what bearing the Anasazi tale has on the modern murder mystery.
What Am I Missing?
We are presented two novellas by the Gears. The first is a fairly simplistic murder mystery -- though not of any genre I can name. It's not a police procedural; there's no detective work; nothing much happens except more and more people out of Dale and Dusty's past (and future) appear out of thin air. The second, physically intertwined with the first, is a sort of pre-Columbian Tom Clancy novel, with bows instead of bombers and clubs instead of subs.
The mystery's plot is linear... body, investigation, suspects, second body, more investigation, more suspects, final denouement. The combat plot is, by contrast, labyrinthine, featuring strike, counterstrike, shifting allegiances, betrayal, combat, stealth, and all the other constants of the type. Neither plot, frankly, is particularly good.
The Anasazi story is the lesser of the two plots. The Gears appear -- like an old married couple -- to plot and write in truncated shorthand. Scene setting is minimal. Character development is glaring in its absence. Motivations are murky when they are discernible at all. Characters appear and disappear willy-nilly, forcing the reader to backtrack for clarification of a charcter's function in the plot. The accompanying maps have no scale, and day-long journeys appear to cover a distance that is traversed in an hour or two in the next chapter. Sites discussed in detail in the narrative are missing from the maps, or identified by a different name (it helps to know some Spanish, so you can figure out that "Casa Rinconada" and "Corner House" are the same place). Most of all, the plot is never placed in any historical context, not even a context constructed of whole cloth.
The mystery is slightly better; there's enough misdirection and introduction of shifting characters to make it interesting. It is, however, one of those thrillers in which no one solves anything, the protagonists simply stumble upon the killer as s/he is about to take another victim.
One personally irritating aspect of the plotting is the names, especially the Anasazi names. Several are similar enough that it's tough to tell who is whom. There's never a "roster" of names: for instance, the Fire Dog warriors who accompany Browser are referenced singly over several chapters, rarely do two of their names appear in the same sentence. The modern mystery has a name problem, too -- the Navajo park ranger Magpie Walking Hawk is alternately called "Maggie" and "Magpie," just different enough to be disconcerting.
Anasazi pueblo [tadam / wikimedia commons]
Different Strokes for Different Folks
The two writers seem to have slightly different agendas: it seems fairly obvious that Michael wrote the Anasazi section -- would a woman write not just one buttwin seductresses, breasts eternally bulging from the tops of their dresses? The relationships of the lead characters in the mystery section are curiously chaste: Dusty and Maureen spend night after night together in cramped quarters. Other characters remark on their obvious mutual attraction, yet these two adults both "keep one foot on the floor" at all times. In contrast, the lives of the older generation (Ruth Ann, Dale, Carter...) were seemingly one long orgy of drugs and sex. Oh, well, it was the sixties!
Archaeology is repeatedly called a "small field," yet Dusty hasn't heard from or laid eyes on his famous mother in over thirty-five years. That aspect of the plot is particularly unbelievable.
Missing Pieces
The life and times of the Anasazi are (last time I looked) quite the mystery. Abundant theories for their civilization's sudden demise ebb and flow. Gear seems to favor disease: frequent mention of an epidemic of "coughing sickness" (tuberculosis?) appear early on, but disappear midway through the book. Cannibalism (a frequent topic in the bibliography) is featured, but mostly the Gears focus on wars between... well, the organizational structure is vague: clans? groups of clans? villages? who knows. The identity and function of the Kachinas / Katsinas / Tlatsinas (all three spellings occur) is, like most aspects, of the Anasazi plot ill-defined.
A bright spot in the narrative is the spirituality. like their modern counterparts (descendants?), the Anasazi are depicted as animists with a firmly grounded belief in the supernatural. Good and evil spirits walk the world, and an animal spirit guide is necessary to ensure your safety before and after death. The force of an evil witch is great, but a nexus of good (curiously like the "power of three" in the television show "Charmed") is of greater power still. Those Whites who honor the ways of the native peoples are in greater harmony with the world (what Jim Chee would call hozho).
Too, the "history" of the Anasazi is fascinating -- at least it could be fascinating if presented more clearly,
Clunky, Repetitive Prose
Sometimes you can forgive a lackluster plot if the writer's prose is particularly inspired. Bone Walker's prose isn't inspired -- it does not sing; it barely hums. Stock phrases are repeated ad nauseam: Catkin's face is always a "beautiful oval," Obsidian's hair is always "jet decorated with turquoise beads. No appearance of Ruth Ann is complete without the remark that her "face still retains traces of its youthful beauty." That latter, in fact, appears in slightly different form twice within a few pages.
Many aspects of the novel are repetitive: Ruth Ann's concha belt is described three times... Every meal Dusty and Maureen eat is Mexican (and the Gears commit New Mexican heresy by spelling "chile" with two Is)... Then, too, scenery and setting descriptions are sparse -- a disappointing omission for one who loves the open spaces of the Colorado Plateau.
Overall
It amazes me that this duo has more than twenty books published already, especially when, at one point, their characters mock a fellow archaeologist for publishing a popular book! One of a series of "Anasazi mysteries, Bone Walker does not stand alone: it is is written as if the authors expect readers to already be familiar with the world they've envisioned for the Anasazi. Not the professional work on the Anasazi; some of which which is referenced in a six-page bibliography; the fictional world created by the Gears themselves. Not a good thing, in my opinion.
Read it for an interesting -- though literarily flawed -- take on Anasazi culture; a plausible world. Read it for a bibliography of Anasazi country. Don't read it for a good mystery; don't read it for a good tale: it isn't either.
Capsule
Sexy twin Anasazi. Recovering alcoholic anthropologist. Repetitive. Asexual widow. Randy sixties field trips. Repetitive. Abandonment. Hatred. Mutilation and witchcraft. FOG index of ten. Repetitive. It's chile you dolts!