Billy Verite

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Returning to LaCrosse, Wis., and several of the characters from his debut, The Driftless Zone, Harsch chronicles the rise of B.A.D., a motorcycle gang led by Skunk Forhension, a Lee Harvey Oswald look-alike with a penchant for talking his enemies to death. Preternaturally ugly PI Billy Verit is hired by undercover police officer Stratton to spy on B.A.D. but falls for Stratton's nymphomaniac girlfriend Lola (for all the stylistic inventiveness, Harsch writes women characters according to old-fashioned types). With seemingly intentional disregard for conventional plotting, Harsch removes Billy and Lola from LaCrosse to a nearby deserted island in the Mississippi River (an odd contrivance, given the region's abundance of hiding places). Billy builds a fort on the island and engages with Lola in various Huck-Finnish escapades of an adolescently repressed creepiness that detracts from Billy's already shaky position as the novel's moral center. Harsch's enjoyment of quirky rhetorical flourishes ("feary quietude," a "ribby chest," "his apperceptual doldrums") is distracting, although some of the many neologisms he sprinkles about the text are poetic (the inspired "Zorbic," from Zorba the Greek, for instance). Harsch obviously has talent, but in this novel he seems determined to spread it thin. (Sept.)

Library Journal

In this sequel to The Driftless Zone (LJ 6/15/97), Harsch returns to the seamy underbelly of LaCrosse, WI. Unlikely a scene as that may seem, he successfully portrays it as a place as decayed and depraved as Rick Moody's New Jersey or the Deep South of Barry Hannah. When small-time hood Gerard discovers that his friend Lola is sexually involved with corrupt cop Llewelyn Torgeson, he incurs Torgeson's wrath. Gerard tries to get help from the FBI, while Lola hides out on a small island with Billy Verit , a homely, bumbling private eye. Meanwhile, Torgeson and his partner, Stratton, discover that they are no match for their new master, Skunk Lane Forehension, a Lee Harvey Oswald lookalike with an uncanny ability for diagnosing illnesses and making sure people die of them. Utterly outnumbered and outgunned, Lola and Billy conduct a brilliant guerrilla skirmish. This Michener/Copernicus Award-winning book will delight lovers of noir, Gothic lit, satire, or postmodern fiction and is highly recommended for all public and academic libraries.--Jim Dwyer, California State Univ., Chico

Kirkus Reviews

The sequel to last yearþs The Driftless Zone carries on in the same neo-noir vein, as Harsch mixes old villains and flawed heroes with new in a tale of a city so corrupt that the only homes for the good guys are places most people would think of as uninhabitable. Take Gerard, for example: He lives quietly in the maintenance closet of a La Crosse, Wisconsin, office building, where he practices his viola after hoursþuntil a foray into a nearby bar exposes him to the crooked cop whose wife heþs known too well. He flees with his barmate, Lola, whoþd been giving the cop special oral treats after he framed her in a coke deal, to the surveillance van of Billy Verit‚, feckless private eye and the ugliest man aroundþwhoþs also not one of the copsþ favorite people. Billy stows Lola away while Gerard makes plans, but the plot thickens when an evil genius, Skunk, with an infallible eye for diagnosing the medical conditions of others, arrives to take over a motorcycle gang running the cityþs drugs. Discovering that his office has been bugged by Billy, and that Gerard saw him abducting an FBI agent who then vanished, Skunk wants them both. But Gerard has taken his friends to an uninhabited island in the Mississippi for safety, leaving them with supplies and a promise to return weekly. Gerardþs good deeds, which include kidnaping the copþs crooked partner, prove no match for Skunkþs powers, and when he fails to make the rendezvous with Billy and Lola, Billy knows they must prepare for the worst. The showdown comes as a tribute to Billyþs ingenuity and as a revelation to all. But Skunk is still the man in charge. Thanks toHarschþs sophisticated style, the smoky flavor of noir and its parodic doppelg„nger strike an apt balance here: the result is impressive, as complex and redolent as fine old wine.