Patricia Abbott

I have often remarked that I do not need to like a book’s main character to like the book itself. Turns out that is not as accurate a statement as I want it to be. And then there’s learning I really don’t like artists much. Ouch.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning.

Violet Hart is an artistic photographer. A not very successful one. When we meet her she’s staring at 40 and if not outright desperate then very, very keen to make a mark in her chosen field and realises the opportunity might be slipping away. Her lover, Bill, is a funeral director. He takes great pride in taking care of his clients, often dressing them in stylish clothes he has sourced himself. One day Bill asks Violet to take a photo of one of his clients, after the young man has been dressed and made up but before his burial. The man’s family is overseas and won’t be able to attend the funeral so Violet’s photo is all they’ll have. The act of taking the photo – getting it right – spurs Violet’s creativity. Could she put together a collection of photographs of the dead?

If you find that premise creepy you’re not alone. I did. Still do if truth be told though I think Violet – and Abbott – made a decent case for the idea having merit by the end of the book. But I know in my heart I wouldn’t go to see such an exhibition were one to open nearby. A lot of the people in the story were troubled by it too. Including Bill who Violet cajoles into asking the families of most of his clients for permission to photograph and he does though with increasing reluctance. But the further she gets into the project the more demanding Violet becomes. Because this could be the something special she’s been looking for. Because most of Bill’s clients are young black men. Bill himself is black and he says black people want to use ‘one of their own’ when it comes to funerals. Violet’s photographs then are saying something about the fact that young black men – at least in Detroit – have a habit of dying.

While all this is going on Violet also becomes tangentially involved in a criminal investigation. It starts when she is wandering her city looking for interesting ways to photograph the city. On Bell Isle – an island park in the Detroit River – she befriends a street artist with some mental health issues and artistic interests nearly as bizarre as Violet’s. His death brings Violet into contact with the police.

At some point during all of this I gave up even trying to like Violet. I just couldn’t. I don’t think it’s only because of the artistic subject, though that didn’t help. But even if she were taking photos of smiling babies I wouldn’t have liked her. She is so self-absorbed and obsessed with her art that she doesn’t care who she hurts to get what she wants. Towards the end of the story something truly, truly awful happens and Violet barely stops to draw breath before setting up her gear and taking a photo. All I could think was “cold-hearted bitch“.

And so we come to the heart of the matter. I really didn’t like Violet. And each time I stopped reading I became reluctant to re-start. I wanted to know what would happen – there’s so much I haven’t brought up here that is utterly fascinating about Violet’s family history and the way the story builds to its inevitable but entirely (by me) unpredicted third act – but I wanted to find out without having to spend more time with Violet. The wanting to know what would happen won out in the end but I came to almost resent the book for forcing me to spend time with such an unpleasant human being. I could go to work and do that and at least be paid.

But that’s a pretty good effort on the part of the author. She hooked me so thoroughly in the intertwined story of Violet and the city of Detroit – a city so damaged by the global financial meltdown that you can feel it creaking into decay – that I read on regardless of my growing antipathy towards Violet. Horrid though she may be (to me) Violet is totally compelling and the picture Abbott paints of Detroit is hauntingly memorable. When combined with the very good narration by Jennywren Walker of the audio version, the book’s sense of place made me truly feel like I was there.

If art is – at its best – supposed to make the beholder think then SHOT IN DETROIT is an absolute winner. I’m still mulling over aspects of it a month later. Does the end – in this case a successful and thought-provoking photographic exhibition – always justify the means? Is trampling over the feelings and needs of others what it takes to create great art? And if it is why can’t artists go get a proper job instead of hurting people for their cause. Do we need art that badly?

So do I recommend the book? The writing is excellent and the story suspenseful in a way that almost everything labelled ‘suspense’ fails to be. But should I be recommending you spend time with someone so unpleasant as Violet Hart? Someone so well written you won’t even be able to leave her within the pages of the book? I’ll leave that for you to decide.… (mehr)

Christine was twelve years old when her mom, Eve Moran, shot her current boyfriend, Jerry Santini, dead in their apartment. It wasn’t long afterwards before Christine once again took care of her mom by claiming to have killed Jerry Santini. After all, cleaning up after her mom was a job Christine had really gotten really good at by then thanks to the fact she had lots of practice over the years.

Told in flashbacks of various lengths through the book, Concrete Angel by Patti Abbott details eighteen years of Christine’s life. From 1964 to approximately1982 in various locations in the Philadelphia area Christine dealt with a life of quiet family chaos. While the book opens with the shooting that in some ways did change things in other ways it was a minor blip on a long and wide ranging continuum of the family dysfunction.

Such issues are frequent topics of the author’s shorter fiction. While multiple crimes are present in the book, the psychological relationships are the heart of Concrete Angel. Hence the labeling of the book as “domestic suspense” in this age of making everything fit a nice neat designation. Makes sense if you also believe that Faulkner is domestic suspense as there is definitely a tone of Faulkner throughout the read. Granted the book is set in the Northeast but the characters could have easily come out of the Deep South. Right down to the neat freak bigoted Grandmother who is all about appearances over everything and anyone else.

The relationship between Christine and her mother takes precedence for a variety of reasons, but there are other familial relationships at work here that don’t always have Christine’s best interests at heart. The aforementioned Grandmother an obvious case in point, but there are others just as guilty. This is not one of those families you wish to be born into if your goal is a safe and nurturing environment. A mighty good book that defies easy labeling, Concrete Angel is a complex read that pulls you in deep and will haunt you long after the read is finished.

Concrete Angel
Patti Abbott
http://pattinase.blogspot.com/
Polis Books
http://www.polisbooks.com/
June 2015
ISBN-13: 978-1940610382
Paperback (also available in audio and e-book formats)
320 Pages
$14.95

Kevin R. Tipple ©2015… (mehr)

Although there are a lot of crimes depicted in CONCRETE ANGEL they are not the heart of the matter. No one is really interested in solving any of them, not even the murder with which the book opens. People are interested in covering them up though. In pretending they haven’t happened. Although for the perpetrator of most of the crimes – Eve Moran – this is all just part of the way she builds a story of her life that is the way she wants it rather than the way it is. Eve is a ‘never let the facts get in the way of a good yarn’ kind of gal. Those who are under the influence of whatever charms Eve possesses willingly play their part in such coverups. And even when they’ve grown tired of her manipulations a combination of lingering entanglement and desire for self preservation means Eve is rarely without assistance when it is most needed.

The story starts in Philadelphia in the 1970’s. Eve shoots dead a man she brought home to the apartment she shares with her twelve year old daughter Christine. Within a few hours Christine has confessed to the shooting and accepted the mantle of child who kills and all that goes with it (though the ‘all’ is a lot milder than you might imagine). Before long Eve’s ‘memory’ is of the made up version of events rather than the reality and that pattern is repeated throughout the novel as we learn about Eve’s life both before and after this particular night.

Eve was born just before the start of the second world war, described in Abbott’s imaginative prose as “descending on [her parents’] simple Lutheran lives in 1938 like a tsunami”. The reader gets the sense that Eve’s traits – her wilfulness, her narcissism and the almost primal need to acquire things – are not entirely the result of her strict upbringing. Even when things are going well for her – such as when she marries a soldier from a local well-to-do family – she can’t control her impulses. Or perhaps it is better to say she won’t control them. Why should she? Eve is hardly a likeable character but she certainly is compelling.

I grew up at roughly the same time as Christine so the book’s period setting should feel vaguely familiar to me but it doesn’t. I don’t mean it doesn’t seem realistic, just not something that I recognise. I suspect it’s the gun thing. They are normalised in America in a way that still has the capacity to astound me. The fact that CONCRETE ANGEL opens with a scene in which a woman shoots a man six times with a weapon provided by her ex-husband ‘just in case’ she ever needs protection and that no one ever queries this puts the book into foreign territory for me in a way that something set in the remotest part of Iceland probably wouldn’t do.

CONCRETE ANGEL is a slow-burn of a read that delves deep into the darker side of human psychology. Though not full of twists in the traditional sense for crime fiction there is genuine suspense in seeing the relationship between Eve and her daughter develop. I can’t be the only reader who spent a good portion of the book very, very worried for the child who desperately needed someone in her corner.… (mehr)

A e-collection of flash fiction, all around the central theme of Megamart. Each story is 800 words or less and so the collection is a quick read.

It contains stories by Patricia Abbott, Sophie Littlefield, Kieran Shea, Chad Eagleton, Ed Gorman, Cormac Brown, Fleur Bradley, Alan Griffiths, Laura Benedict, Garnett Elliot, Eric Beetner, Jack Bates, Bill Crider, Loren Eaton, John DuMond, John McFetridge, Toni McGeeCausey, Jeff Vande Zande, James Reasoner, Kyle Minor, Randy Rohn, Todd Mason, Byron Quertermous, Sandra Scoppettone, Stephen D. Rogers, Steve Weddle, Evan Lewis, Daniel B. O'Shea, Sandra Seamans, Albert Tucher, Donna Moore, John Weagly, Keith Rawson, Gerald So, Dave Zeltserman, Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen, Jay Stringer, Anne Frasier, Kathleen A. Ryan, Eric Peterson, Chris Grabenstein and J.T. Ellison.
Put a dozen writers in a room with a topic and you'll get a dozen entertaining stories, and this collection is no exception, except you've got over 40. Here are offerings by some well known names, including Donna Moore, alongside a debut published story by Dorte Hummelshoj Jakobsen.
It is a lovely anthology, very entertaining. I was fascinated by the common elements of the stories. Look particularly for the Megamart Greeters who appear in a variety of disguises. Well done to Patti Abbott and Steve Weddle for bringing all the stories together.… (mehr)