Surf City Acid Drop

sun, sea and suds

First things first, fantastic title. It had me expecting some drug running in this laid-back mystery but turns out it’s a surfing term: the “surfer name for riding a wave that suddenly disappeared beneath them.” Dude.

Luke Fischer isn’t a detective or a private eye, but he finds people (sometimes). He’s a Canadian living in his favorite run-down motel in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, looking for the deadbeat ex-husband of Mrs. Charmer, a Wisconsin woman he wouldn’t mind charming himself. He’s also the occasional muscle for his friend Benno (“mostly tough guy stuff”), and with his boxing background, he can take a punch and dole one out as well.

Damn but he takes a lot of punches. There’s plenty of violence in this novel, ranging from a smack in the head to full-on beat downs. Plus, guns, lots of guns.

Craig Terlson’s created a winner in Luke and Surf City Acid Drop. It’s a hard-boiled Mexican noirish novel that rolls along, taking the reader on a fun ride from Mexico to New Mexico, Montana, Canada and Wisconsin. The book is filled with memorable characters, including Mostly Harold, who was weirdly endearing to me. He’s grumpy, rough, and violent, but he surprised me at times. Stone cold killers are human, too.

As the story progresses and Luke takes a job searching for a wayward brother, an unlikely, grudgingly respectful “friendship” emerges between Luke and Harold. Well, perhaps not quite friends, but they’re people who don’t kill each other and that’s something.

Mexico is as much a character as the shady bunch Luke runs with – and runs from. Terlson paints a picture of a colorful country, like the purple sunsets Luke notices and appreciates. Yes, he’s a brawler with a hair-trigger edge, but he has a poet’s soul, taking in the beauty around him like the “patch of wall that was the exact shade of a honeydew melon.”

I love the dialog in this novel – it’s classic but original, with shades of Robert B. Parker. It’s been a while since I tore through all the Spenser novels, but like Parker’s famous detective Luke’s a different kind of hard-ass / wise ass: self-assured, confident, and dogged in his investigations.

Take, for example, the time he gets run out of town by two cops he nicknamed Plato and Socrates –

They drove me to the outskirts of town and dropped me next to a bar pretending to be a diner.

Or this quote, which I can relate to (I once had a dragonfly caught in my hair).

“The woman at the front desk had a head of hair she could lose birds in, and not sparrows, eagles, big ones.”

One thing I couldn’t figure out: what’s Luke running from? Maybe the second book in the series will have some answers.

Surf City Acid Drop has a great ending, and overall, it makes me want to escape to Mexico to enjoy some tropical fruit, ice-cold Pacificos, and peanuts doused in hot sauce. You in?