QUICK SHOTS: The Backup Men by Ross Thomas

Ross Thomas could really write the hell out of a book. He seemed to do it with ease. The natural banter between characters, the natural banter between himself and the reader all pours out on the page like a aged scotch neat. He's a writer's author. He never quite made it super big but instead carving himself a nice career with cloak and dagger books that were like no other. He started late in life which seems to have been a colorful life and after two weeks in his 40's he had a book down that won an Edgar. Then BANG he had a career. I personally probably gleaned a lot of my views on what a politician is based on the descriptions of the folk who hang out at Mac's Place in D.C. in Thomas's books. As I got older I haven't found that Thomas's opinions of senators, congressmen, government types or bartenders were wrong. There's not really "nice people" in his books, but you don't mind spending time with them, the way it happens sometimes in life too.

The older I get the more open to re-reading. I first read this during a snowy winter in my 20's. I remember it distinctly as I read a chunk of it in a cold 1963 Ford Fairlane that I had just driven off the road after having a run-in with a patch of ice while waiting for a tow. I guided the car through a barbed wire fence and between two trees. It was a fancy bit of sliding. It was nice company. "The Backup Men" is the third book about "Mac" McCorkle and Michael Padillo, a barman and a deadly (sometimes) ex-spy. Mac's narration probably pretty close to talking Thomas himself, at least that's the way I like to think of it. Together they own the aforementioned Mac's Place formerly in Bonn, Germany but in D.C. in this book. Padillo is around sometimes, sometimes he's off doing the spy-bit. Mac runs the bar and tells us their stories. Open on of their books and skullduggery always ensues. In this one they are roped into being body guards to a new King and his adviser as they cross the U.S. to sign some important papers about the fate of the new King's oil rich country. Along the way they get involved with the personal revenge of Wanda, sister of the dead a-team, fend off professional killers, drink copious amounts of booze, fall into and setup up various traps, meet nice-old society ladies and exchange wise-cracks. It's a book full of old friends even if this is the first time you met them. You read a Thomas not for the plot (though those are always good too) you read them to enjoy a drink and dodge a few bullets in capable hands. 

Thomas is on my Mt. Rushmore of favorite authors. He writes with a thick brush of sarcasm and wit but never sacrifices the intrigue and action. He's best when he gets to write about a duo having wild adventures like Mac and Padillo or Artie Wu and Quincy Durant but his "professional go-between" Phillip St. Ives novels (as by Oliver Bleeck) are also uniformly good, if a little slight. St. Ives got a Charlie Bronson movie made out of one of them too. His novel "Briarpatch" was just made into a TV series, staring Rosario Dawson but even now Ross Thomas is vastly underrated and bordering on being a forgotten writer. I keep him next my Donald E. Westlake novels on the shelf, so you know, close to the heart. 

St. Ives (1976) Gentlemanly Bronson Badassery

Charles Bronson was THE badass of the badasses. But like all regular working stiffs he liked to take it easy now and then. St. Ives is Bronson taking it easy, he doesn't have to ride a horse or shoot a lot of people or get into TOO many fistfights. No, Bronson wanted to hang around talk-act to people like John Houseman and look at women like Jacqueline Bisset Who could blame him?

There was a time where Bronson was LITERALLY the biggest movie star in the world. He name put people in seats. It seems like such a far-away notion that a man that looks like you made him from chopped rock and who is a "presence" as apposed to an actor could really be that big. Of course it was the foreign markets that really love Bronson. He was a man's man. In an era of hard-case actors he reigned supreme over the likes of Steve McQueen or Lee Marvin, no small feat. The part that doesn't seem to be in the public perspective of Bronson is that he had a lot of laid-back charm, he showcased it some in the 70's this and "Breakout" show a different Bronson, one who gets the job done still but through being crafty as opposed to simply blowing people away. To be fair he only really had to successful gears: he could give you intense ass-kickery or laid-back ass-kickery. This is a Bronson is a author who sleeps late, eats deli meat in a cafeteria, and drives a classy vintage Jaguar. He also works a "go-between" for crooks. Transferring money for good. It pays good enough I guess to keep him in chicory coffee and very wide neck ties. But it doesn't keep him out of trouble.

St. Ives was created by an author named Oliver Bleeck who was actually an author named Ross Thomas who COULD MOTHER-FUCKIN' WRITE A BOOK. Seriously he started late in life, wrote his first book "The Cold-War Swap" in six weeks and won a Edgar for his trouble. Right out the gate. He had a colorful life of  politics, soldiering, corresponding and maybe spying. He went on to write a good number of books that are all damned good, written in a witty style of blood and guts that is hard to come by. Along the way he wrote a series about St. Ives under the fake name, but they are clearly his work. He also had to particularly good series following spies/bar-owners Padillo and McCorkle and another one about con-men Artie Wu and Quincy Durant.  

The 70's had a resurgence of love for the 40's crime/mystery film after "Chinatown" blew everyone's mind. You had "Peeper," "The Late Show,""Pulp," "The Big Fix," "The Outfit," etc. etc. A lot of them had Elisha Cook Jr. (of "Maltese Falcon" fame) in them. This one does too. He's always nice to see.  It's got a old-school ascetic with clear direction from J. Lee Thompson, who I'm forever in debt to for directing "The Guns of Navarone."  There's nasty rich people played very politely, run down hotels, cop-shops, stoolies, killers, the hero getting conked in the head; basically all its missing is a voice over from Bronson and to be in black and white.

Is it a great film? Eh, probably not. The plot is a thin-jumble on loop, parts of it are just going through the motions of "find dead-body, rinse, repeat" but I enjoy the hell out of it though. There is some good old-fashion thrilling sequences, including a elevator gag that made my wife gasp. It's nice to see Bronson have a lighter touch. Jacqueline Bisset is spunky and cool, she seems to be having fun playing Cops and Robbers. It's got call-backs to an era of cinema that I couldn't love more. Add a fantastic cast with the likes of Harry Guardino, Harris Yulin, Dana Elcair and Maximilian Schell hamming it up with a fantastically dramatic moustache. Plus bits parts by Robert Englund and Jeff Goldblum who seems gets his ass kicked by Bronson a lot. St. Ives will never be ranked in the great films of the 70's but rankings are for dicks.

I got through this whole thing without saying "No dice." Shame really.