Alan Trotter’s Muscle takes an interesting approach to dismantling the notion of literary genres — specifically the hardboiled mystery genre — and although it gets off to an admirable start, in the end the genre always wins. That’s basically the case I make in my latest review for Splice:
By now you’ve probably got the sense that Muscle is a rollicking good time, and you’d be right — up to a point. It is the language, above all, that animates Trotter’s novel, and not only the language of Box’s narration but also the dialogue of other characters who repurpose the kitschy ease of pulp noir. A woman who looks like a potential femme fatale, for instance, is explicitly designated as a generic type, as “the love interest” of a private investigator. And the shamus, for his part, speaks like the ideal of the hardboiled hero, telling his “love interest” not to worry, calling her “kid”, and issuing Box and ______ with a warning that properly belongs in a speech balloon from a comic book: “You two so much as wag your tails too hard and there’s lead coming back through this door for you to fetch.” But then, as will be familiar to anyone who has ever tried to read a copy of Black Mask from cover to cover, there’s only so much buoyancy that a story can take from even this entertaining language, and beyond that point there’s a real struggle for fresh air.
Infinite Patience 