‘Citizen Vince’ by far Walter’s best novel to date
Vince Camden is someone we all know.
He may bag our groceries, rotate our tires, mow our lawns or serve us doughnuts. Whatever he does, he’s one of the faceless guys who is part of our life without our even noticing.
Vince, though, has a secret. First of all, his name isn’t Vince at all. It’s Marty Hagen, and he has a whole life that is like something out of a novel.
Of course, a novel is exactly where we do meet him. Specifically, we meet him in the pages of “Citizen Vince,” the new novel by Spokane author Jess Walter.
Walter is gradually becoming a familiar name to fans of modern mystery fiction, especially those whose tastes run to books that are written to pass as literature instead of the mere offerings of pulp. This is his third novel, and it is by far his best.
His first, 2000’s “Over Tumbled Graves,” was that noble first effort, a big book whose ambitions were a tad too great for the author to fully realize. His second, 2003’s “Land of the Blind,” was arguably better written, but its plotline felt too much like a gimmick.
“Citizen Vince” is different. It’s as much a cultural commentary as it is a mystery, as much a character study as it is a tale of mob guys and the damage they do, as much an exploration of what the simple act of voting means to one man as it is an exercise in ironic humor.
The protagonist – we’ll continue to call him Vince – works as a Spokane doughnut maker. Sent to Spokane as part of the federal witness-protection program after testifying against the New York mob (real-life mob boss John Gotti is a character), Vince hasn’t left his criminal side behind. He sells dope on the side and has compromised a U.S. Postal Service worker in the theft of mail-order credit cards.
All is fine until Vince starts to feel a bit paranoid, which isn’t unwarranted. A soulless killer who turns out to be another federally protected ex-Goodfella from the East has cast eyes on Vince’s little organization and wants to move in. To survive, Vince ends up enlisting the help of a friendly prostitute, the literate beauty whom he covets, her Republican-leaning would-be boyfriend and, ultimately, the Godfather Gotti himself.
But that is merely the plot. The magic – and, yes, that’s the correct word – of “Citizen Vince” comes from the title character and the setting he finds himself in. A career criminal and convicted felon, Vince has never voted. But the year happens to be 1980, and the presidential election, which features California Republican Ronald Reagan attempting to unseat incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter, has captured his attention.
In the midst of everything else – his hiding from his former mob buddies, his being hounded both by a shark-eyed psychopath and a Spokane cop named Dupree – the thing that Vince wants to do more than anything is to vote.
His desire to cast his ballot is so great that, even with a gun barrel pushed into the nape of his neck, he tells the gunman: “Look. I’m not crying here. I’m not begging, or pretending we aren’t what we are. But I gotta do this first.”
You’d think that he had a purple-stained finger or something.
Aside from his prose skills and ability to create characters that are as unique as they’re unforgettable, here’s another truism about Walter: No one knows Spokane better than he does, and certainly no one writes about it better.
Local readers will recognize traditional area place names such as Sam’s Pit, the Ridpath Hotel and P.M. Jacoy’s. Even the volcanic ash remaining after the eruption of Mount St. Helens plays a part in one of Vince’s schemes.
Outsiders will get a feel for what the city actually looked like in 1980.
Example: “Walk any block in Spokane and you can see in the city’s design the way it was settled – a slow, 150-year flood of homes, filling the river gorge first, west to east, and then rising onto the ledges, ridges, and hills: outward and onward, north, south, easy, and generally up.
“The downtown, seven blocks by fifteen blocks of brick and block and terra-cotta, covers the first ledge, and beyond and above that are neighborhoods of Victorian, Tudor, and Craftsman, and beyond that Deco, cottage, and bungalow, and beyond that rambler, rancher, and split level, neighborhoods that have begun to spill over the far sides of the facing hills.”
Like anyone who loves where he lives, yet isn’t afraid to stray from the Chamber of Commerce line, Walter is honest about the relative charm of the Lilac City.
Example (again, 1980): “Ange looks around the parking lot, takes in the freeway behind him, and the streets leading toward downtown: covered with squat brownstones and a few taller office buildings, the whole thing surrounded on both sides by gently sloped, tree-lined hills, like a city some started building and then quit. Cars move languorously on the surface streets. In front of the restaurant, a streetlight sways gently in the wind.
‘So this is it? This is the place you were so excited to get back to?’
‘Yeah,’ Vince says. ‘This is where I live.’
‘It’s not really what I pictured. It’s less … I don’t know.’ Ange shrugs. ‘Just less.’ He looks at the car across the parking lot, then back to Vince. ‘But I’m sure it’s nice.’ “
This, of course, might not mean much to the rest of the country, which likely still equates Spokane – if it thinks of it at all – with that world’s fair thing of three decades ago.
But, see, that’s where “Citizen Vince” is different. It’s a novel that could be set anywhere – in Detroit, in Miami or even Bakersfield, Calif. – and it still would be as good because Walter is that successful at touching on themes that are as perceptive about American culture as they’re universal in application.
It’s just that in the process, he doesn’t so much bring Spokane to the rest of the country as he brings the rest of the country here.
And he is as capable, and successful, of explaining our fair city to the world as he is at explaining Vince to anyone willing to listen.