The Devil's Wind

This book is not about Satanic flatulence. Instead it refers to the Santa Ana winds of California, dangerous literary territory, because those very same winds are the subject of one of Raymond Chandler's most famous passages. Richard Rayner has clearly read his Raymond Chandler, and undaunted, has written a run-of-the-mill noir that is a shadow of the master.

I read this book because I'm headed for Las Vegas next month and I'm going to read a few novels set there to get in the mood. The Devil's Wind is set in Vegas in 1956, a time that I find particularly fascinating. It was the time of the Rat Pack and the A-bomb tests, when Vegas was still a dusty cow town, but starting to evolve into the mega-entertainment complex it is today.

The narrator is an architect, Maurice Valentine, who has designed a few hotels for the mob boss who runs the town. A young woman (a femme fatale, natch) seduces him, and ends up shooting him. But was Valentine the real target? The woman dies in a car wreck shortly thereafter, but Valentine digs into her past and tries to find out the truth.

The main problem I had with this novel was the main character himself. Valentine is neither witty or charming. He tells us he's a rich and famous architect, but he we don't see him doing any work. His father-in-law is a U.S. senator, and Valentine is tapped to replace the ailing senator of Nevada, which struck me as implausible. I haven't done the research, but I'd venture to say there has never been an architect who went directly the Senate. Also, Valentine doesn't suffer enough. The anti-heroes of noir regularly get beaten to a pulp, or have their hearts ripped out, metaphorically speaking. Aside from getting grazed by a bullet that he recovers from rather quickly, Valentine hardly gets mussed.

I'm glad I stuck with the book, though, because the ending packs a nice punch. A subplot involving black jazz musicians is introduced (black musicians played the Vegas hotels, but couldn't stay in them, and had to cross the tracks to the ghetto), and though there are two twists that are easy to see coming, they are still fun to watch unfold.

I'm still waiting for the perfect Vegas book. I'm currently writing one, so maybe I'm following Jean-Luc Godard's advice, when he said that the best way to criticize a film is to make another one.