There are many ways to choose books, and one method I sort of like (as a transient as I am) is to choose books that center on locations where I presently reside. I don’t live in Beloit, but for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve been 20 minutes or less away, and we frequent the town often enough to get a sense of it. I’d never have read the book otherwise, so what better time to read it than now?
I’d never have read this book mainly because mysteries are not my common fare. My parents have always adored writers like Rex Stout, Ngaio Marsh, and of course Agatha Christie, but the classic Whodunnit? has just never dunnit for me.
Bent Dead in Beloit wasn’t really so much a “mystery” as it was a long diary of sorts, which hinted at an ending the reader may or may not have expected. I had an inkling of how it might all play out, but I usually don’t try to guess the endings of books. Random books like these are my escape, my diversions. I’m just along for the ride.
The first-person style of this book felt annoying to me at first, especially since Jeremy’s self-berating as an overweight college dropout came up on like every other page. Still, after a few chapters, the style grew on me. It reminded me a little bit of Catcher in the Rye, which is why I guess I wasn’t entirely certain how everything would play out.
The characters in the story were strong enough. I feel like we should have known the partner just a tad bit more deeply, like through an extra conversation or two over drinks after work. That would have added more weight to the ending, at least in my opinion. The secretary was a unique addition, but I think no one was more interesting than the cat.
The cat who ostensibly had the power of ESP (but not really) was a real plus for me, though I don’t know why. I’m not a cat person. I’m obviously not into any psychic nonsense. But Jeremy used this possibility, this conjuring up of what his cat might have seen, had it been lurking outside a certain window across town, to think through his cases. It was a unique and believable tool which allowed the protagonist to talk to himself, to catch every clue, every scrap of emotion, and place them onto the page in a way that worked. Kudos to McBride for such a fun method.
The other elements to this story are as unfamiliar to me as Beloit probably is to the world—meth, murder, and a desperate housewife or two. Like I said, not my norm, but it was fun anyway.
I’m in the midst of a move, so the book is boxed up somewhere, meaning that whatever portions I had underlined, whatever quotable quotes McBride might have written for Jeremy, are hidden away. Maybe I’ll add them at some point down the road.
©2020 E.T.