Johnny Vermillion is
the stage name of the lead actor and brains behind The Prairie Rose Repertory
Company. On their tracks is a Pinkerton detective, who has persuaded his
boss—Allan Pinkerton himself—to let him leave his desk job and try his hand in
the field. Also in hot pursuit is a gang of cold-blooded outlaws, upset that
the Prairie Rose is giving them stiff competition.
Plot. It is 1875, a year in that sliver of time
between the Panic of 1873 and the Little Big Horn. Johnny Vermillion, son of a
Democratic party boss in Chicago, comes by thievery as easily as any young man
following in his father’s footsteps.
 |
| Gem Theatre, Deadwood, 1878 |
Philip Ritterhouse,
the Pinkerton detective, is not so easily fooled. He has an obsessive attention
to details that reminds one of Sherlock Holmes. By reading coverage of the
string of robberies in local newspapers, he discovers the odd coincidence of
the Prairie Rose’s appearance in ads and reviews on the same pages. Putting two
and two together, he sets out to capture them.
Black Jack Brixton’s
gang crosses paths with the company in Salt Lake City, when he and his men show
up a day late to rob an express office. The money is already gone. During a
summer hiatus, while the gang retires to Mexico, the actors disperse to parts
unknown, and Ritterhouse sets a trap for two of them by posing as a booking
agent. At the start of the next theatrical season, all are fated to be reunited
in the dressing room of a theatre in Wichita.
 |
| Opera House, Iowa City, Iowa c1875 |
Much of the fun is
in the narrative voice used to tell the story. Tense switches from past to
present and back to the past again. There is occasional use of the second
person: a pot of coffee is so strong “when it’s poured you could tie a knot in
the stream.” And there’s liberal use of first person plural: “We shall meet him
in the flesh presently.”
Generic conventions
are acknowledged: “Marshal Fletcher was forty and unpleasantly fat, a fixture
in outlaw tales of this type.” In a Denver pleasure palace, “the usual chubby
quartet gallops in sparkling leotards onstage.” Meanwhile, common knowledge is
noted: “Lazy fat men are commonly dismissed as cowardly and stupid.”
 |
| Procession of characters from Shakespeare's plays, c1840 |
The omniscient narrator makes reference to future historical events and can even cite a photo in a 1970s edition of a Time-Life Book. He can speak knowledgably of Molière and refer without explanation to Famous Players-Lasky, Mountain Meadows, Bernard de Voto, the characters in Twelfth Night, and Poe’s Purloined Letter.
At times he’s not so
omniscient, as when he’s unsure whether something happened in November or
December. Providing back story for one character, he seems to have access only
to hearsay: “He’s said to have rustled cattle in Texas.” On the other hand, point
of view shifts among a variety of characters, which allows the narrator to
conveniently withhold information, thus contributing to some happy surprises at
key moments.
On occasion the
narration shifts into what reads like a movie. At one point, we dissolve from a
face on a wanted poster “to a real face, strikingly identical, in glorious
Technicolor on a screen thirty meters wide.” Elsewhere, “an establishing shot
lingers significantly on a plank sign.” The location of a scene shot in sepia appears
as a superimposed title: CHICAGO 1844.
 |
| Theatre, late 19th century, New Orleans |
Dialogue is sharp
and amusing. Here two outlaws discuss the placement of dynamite to blow up a
railroad trestle:
“You could
tie it to that there strut and just impress the fish, but if you put it in the
right place you can blow up Ulysses S. Grant and most of the Republican Party.
“I’d admire
to do that. I would for a fact.
“That’s where
you and me choose up sides. I’m a common thief, not no anarchist.
It is the kind of
western story in which death and injury are common but treated comically as
farce. Only once is mention of them darkly sobering, when we’re reminded of the
thousands of maimed and impoverished veterans of the Civil War now making their
way to the West.
Wrapping up. This is a novel that seems to have been as
much fun to write as it is to read. It is neatly plotted with a full cast of
colorful and believable characters. Estleman comes close to describing his own
storytelling style when he refers to Molière’s comedies, “so deceptively
featherweight in their grasp of the gravity of the absurd.”
First published in
2008, The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion is currently available in paper and ebook formats at amazon,
Barnes&Noble, and at Powell's Books and AbeBooks.
Further reading:
BITS reviews of books
by Loren D. Estleman
Image credits: Wikimedia Commons
Coming up: How to write like Elmore Leonard
I had enjoyed this book a lot. Hope the review leads others to this fun read.
ReplyDeleteDoris
Loren's primary mission, I think, is to entertain. But the subtext is to blow the sclerotic genre to bits and bring in fresh material.
ReplyDeleteNicely put.
DeleteI like the idea. a group of actors as bank robbers. Unique.
ReplyDeleteI have Roy and Lillie in my TBR file and I've enjoyed other stories by Mr. Estlelman, but not Johnny Vermillion yet. He's a fine writer.
ReplyDelete