Foul Matter (Magill Book Reviews)

Best-selling thriller writer Paul Giverney is between publishers, and instead of having them bid for his services, he makes a modest proposal to Mackenzie-Haack. If egomaniacal publisher Bobby Mackenzie and editor Clive Esterhaus will agree to dump Ned Isaly, a very literary novelist with modest sales who is about to submit his next book, Paul will sign with their firm.

While Clive struggles with the moral and ethical ramifications of this dilemma, Bobby, without hesitation, sees a solution: hiring hit men to take out Ned. What Bobby does not count on, however, is that contract killers can have higher standards than publishers, editors, agents, and writers. Author Martha Grimes masterfully cuts back and forth between Paul, Ned, Clive, Bobby, and their cohorts and Candy and Karl, the colorful hit men who strive to know their marks intimately before deciding if they deserve to die.

Best known for her Richard Jury mysteries, set mostly in England, Grimes has written not a whodunit but a will-they-do-it? In addition to poking fun at the New York literary world, Grimes takes on the Manhattan restaurant scene and paints a nostalgic portrait of Pittsburgh, the hometown of Grimes and several of her characters.

Best of all is the highly quotable dialogue of Candy and Karl, thugs with pretensions who quickly catch on to the argot of publishing. They resemble a merging of the hit men in Ernest Hemingway’s “The Killers” and Chili Palmer, the protagonist of Elmore Leonard’s Get Shorty (1990) and Be Cool (1999). Grimes’s blending of characterization, humor, action, and style recalls Leonard at his best. Foul Matter is a wickedly delightful look at egos that cannot be stopped—except, perhaps, by a bullet.

Review Sources

Booklist 99, no. 22 (August 1, 2003): 1925.

Kirkus Reviews 71, no. 13 (July 1, 2003): 876.

Library Journal 128, no. 13 (August 15, 2003): 131.

The New York Times, August 17, 2003, Section 7, p. 15.

Publishers Weekly 250, no. 28 (July 14, 2003): 55.

USA Today, September 3, 2003, p. D4.