The Blood Red Sea

[fajrdrako]

I read an interesting thriller: The Blood Red Sea by Ron Faust. It was stylistically very well written - I particularly liked the first chapter, which is only about a page and a half long. Very catchy. The characters, on the whole, were interesting as well.

But I've never read a book in which so many characters change their mind so often. It's about a lawyer named Dan Shaw, recently out of law school, who hasn't had much success as a criminal lawyer - or, obviously, much interest in the work - and has pretty much changed his mind about being a criminal lawyer. So he takes his boat and goes away to sea.

Floating in the Caribbean, miles from anyway, he come across a woman in the water. Her name is Kate. She's been swimming for more than a day; she says he husband threw her overboard in an attempt to murder her. Dan falls in love, takes up the challenge and the case, and determines to save the damsel, rescue her son (who is still with the husband), kidnap the boy, and save the day.

Except she changes her mind about the situation, and decides that her husband maybe didn't try to kill her after all. And Dan decides not to kidnap the boy, but a friend of his, the dark and dangerous ex-criminal Leroy, decides to do it anyway. (Changing his mind about being an ex-criminal, perhaps.) Then Kate changes her mind about Dan, and about leaving her husband. And so it continues until... by the end of the book I was thinking there was no story. Dan's conclusion, a page or two before the end, is they they all fucked up at every step of the way. Yup. No justice, no resolution, no climax and denouement in this book. I kept thinking there was a really interesting story just out of sight.

And Don himself, while surrounded by interesting and quirky characters - I particularly liked Leroy - seemed to become more and more of an nonentity as the book continued. Was he a man of action? He talks about having killed people in the past, but he doesn't do anything action-oriented here. At one point he picks up a gun - a murder weapon - and instantly changes his mind about whether that was a good idea. Does he grieve the loss of Kate and her love? I couldn't really tell. His only mood seems to be of ironic regret.

Maybe Ron Faust changed his mind about what he was trying to write.