Author: Craig McDonald
Publisher: Bleak House Books
Binding: Hardcover
Publication Date: September 2007
In a dusty cantina on the far side of the Rio Grande, larger-than-life and recently widowed crime writer Hector Lassiter and Bud Fiske, a callow young poet sent by True Magazine to profile Hector, are handed a carpet bag. Inside they find the stolen head of Mexican general Francisco “Pancho” Villa—a long missing relic that may point the way to a fortune in lost treasure or a blood-and-thunder death…
In the dank, hallowed halls of Yale University creep the members of the Skull & Bones, a secret society shrouded in whispers. They are a fraternity whose members include media barons, über executives and politicians, including three generations of men called Bush and their sanctum sanctorum’s trophy cabinet is purportedly packed with the stolen bones of long-dead luminaries…
In a ’57 Bel Air, Hector, Bud, and the beautiful Alicia tear through the desert with a trunk full of human heads. Caught in a crazy crossfire, they lead all manner of headhunters on a breakneck chase across Lost America. U.S. intelligence services, murderous frat boys, the soldier of fortune who stole Pancho’s head from its grave, and the specter of a dead Mexican legend all want Villa’s head though they might settle for Hector’s…
I’m not sure about others but when I hear that a book is going to feature a fictional pulp crime writer and will be set in that time I come into the reading with certain expectations. I expect that the story will feature razor sharp dialogue, lots of action, a great pace and there’s probably gonna be a dead body or twelve. Well, in all of these areas my expectations were exceeded. The first chapter immediately throws you into the middle of this crazy story involving a stolen head and never lets up until the end.
In addition to all of the action-packed chaos that the book offers it also was highly successful in other ways to.
Given that the bulk of the book is the first person narrative of Lassiter, a husky, alcohol soaked and smoke filled voice (my own personal image is close to that of an older Charles Willeford) and the flawed greatness that is that character you’d think that I would spend more time writing about it. With it we get to see a legend in the making that rides out of the horizon, a bit hazy around the edges, slowly coming into focus; that achieves a kind of 20th century immortality as it becomes inextricably entwined with the myth and realty fabric of American history, sometimes flailing in the current of larger forces but at other times paddling against it enough to make a mark. But instead I want to focus on some other interesting aspects of the book.
In one small way my reading of Head Games reminded me of The Girl in the Glass by Jeffrey Ford. By using a mix of fictional and real characters and inserting them into sub-plots involving events that really happened I was able to learn much more then I already knew about the long standing history, and tumultuous relationship, between Mexico and the United States of America and both countries citizens. Given the southwest location of Head Games this relationship is expected but The Girl in the Glass was set in New York, so between the two we, as readers, really get to see a wider scope of the immigration issue and just how deeply intertwined it is with the history of the U.S.
Earlier last year, when I first heard of Head Games it quickly became one of the books that I was looking forward to the most. One of the things that interested me the most was that Head Games, as a work of fiction, advertised the fact that it featured a sitting president that was involved in one of the books sub-plots. And, in a move that piqued the Tim Powers reader in me, McDonald promised to take a gap in history, in this case the, at times highly controversial, National Guard service of George W Bush and offer up a great fictional what if to explain the gap.
Now, to be honest, President Bush’s role in Head Games is a minor one but it was an interesting one. But the one thing about that I found to be the most interesting was how he was portrayed. It has been suggested by some that the Bush administration is one of the most secretive, some would say even surpassing the Nixon administration. But the young George W. Bush that’s presented here in 1970 stands in stark contrast to those allegations. At one point he even says, “You know I don’t go for this secret handshake and handles crap. Never have.”
In further contrast we find this larger monologue that speaks to current issues and also works on a couple of different levels. In it Bush is talking about the Pershing expedition, and the aforementioned relationship with Mexico, but given the current world events it certainly carries parallels.
“Hell, its a crazy-ass notion — getting some wild hair and chasing a single man in another country’s desert. Especially a man whose countrymen are bent on protecting him. The Mexicans, to a man, saw Pershing as an invader, not an avenger. The Pershing Expedition was a farce. Pure folly. It just genned-up anti-American sentiment in the Mexicans. President Wilson would have been ahead to pay some of Pancho’s cronies to take him out or turn him in. But to send Pershing and the Army in? Nuts, man. Just nuts. Like Teddy Roosevelt’s good counsel that time out? Same thing with Wilson, sending Pershing into Mexico — wrong-headed and shortsighted. It was just vengeful.”
I wont sit here and tell you that the inclusion of President Bush into the story is wholly successful, but it is mostly. It raises a lot of interesting questions and is wholly memorable, with Bush even becoming an unexpected ally to Bud Fiske. McDonald took a chance with his inclusion and it ultimately did pay off.
In any number of stories one of the more frequent topics of debate is whether a character or characters from the story changed or not. Whether between two arbitrary points (the beginning and the end) the characters remained static or if there was dynamic change. One could argue that true wholesale change in a character is a rare thing, regardless of medium, and that they remain essentially the same. Hector Lassiter, perhaps because of his older age essentially remains the same character throughout much of the book. But his young charge on the other hand, Bud Fiske, by a direct result of the relationships that he develops and the adventures throughout the book, is most assuredly a different man at the end of the book. Since much of the book can be seen as a road trip novel, that journey from character A to Character B is both an actual journey and a psychological one too. Fiske will be confronted with everything from Mexican gangsters to the secret corridors of higher governmental power and almost everything between and all of it will leave an imprint of some sort on Fiske. In fact by the end of the book we are left to wonder about the state of Fiske’s mental health.
The final pages of the book, in some respects reminded me of the movie Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. We find Fiske on the run from enemies, both real and imagined, holding conversations with the dead. It’s in these conversations that the book draws its final, elegiac moments before ending suddenly before confrontation. The slingshot ending of the book has the characters exiting the final pages before any anticipated goal has been reached. Maybe McDonald wants us to decide the fate of the characters, maybe he has other books planned, I don’t know, but I would love to see another adventure with them.
The bottom line is the Head Games is an ambitious novel that largely succeeds. Not only is it an action packed romp of a book but it made think on larger themes and issues as well. It was an anticipated book for me that lived up to the expectations and wound up being exiting, funny and thought provoking with a fantastic mix of real, historic and fictional characters.
**Two points of interest. 1) It seems that Head Games is currently being adapted into a graphic novel. 2) It appears that there are some other books planned for these characters.
