Our book club’s book for March was Steve Hockensmith’s THE CRACK IN THE LENS. For those who haven’t experienced this delightful series, it takes place in the rough-and-tumble Old West (or thereabouts), when men were tough and women were tougher, especially those saloon gals. Our heroes are the Amlingmeyer brothers. Older brother Gustav (“Old Red”) is the stoic, man-of-few-words who comes to worship Sherlock Holmes and decides to embark on a career of “deducifying,” not hampered in the least by being illiterate. Tagging along is foppish younger brother Otto (“Big Red”), he of large girth and a contract with a New York publisher to write about his brother’s cases.
When THE CRACK IN THE LENS opens, Gustav has decided to return to San Marcos, Texas, where his beloved (a saloon girl trying to get out of the business) had been murdered savagely years earlier. From the minute the Amlingmeyer brothers enter town, though, they are the target of much ill will, as well as more than a few attempts to run them out of town before they uncover any unpleasant skeletons in the closet.
As a group, we find it a bit strange that we like tales of the Old West, as none of us really watches Westerns. But it seems that every time we read something set in the Old West, we enjoy it. We’ve enjoyed the works of Larry McMurtry and, in the mystery genre, Ann Parker. None of us had read Hockensmith before, but one of our members had heard tell of him (to use an Old West phrase), and some research uncovered a lot of positive reviews, so we decided to give it a try.
We were glad we did. Old Red and Big Red are two very appealing heroes; and, even better, they behave a lot like real brothers. Hockensmith does a very nice job of positioning the “boys” properly in the birth order, with Old Red taking somewhat grudging care of his baby brother, and Big Red looking up to his older brother while not really knowing when to keep his mouth shut. The storytelling here, we all agreed, is top-notch, with bright, clever reading and nice turns of phrase. The pacing is quick; and while the story isn’t necessarily ground-breaking, it serves quite well to anchor the characters and setting. The pace flags a bit in the second half, but that’s a small criticism in a book that almost all of us enjoyed very much.
Since we like to read writers we haven’t read before, a big part of our discussion revolves around whether or not we’d like to read more by the same author. Of the 11 people who attended our meeting, 10 of us said we would; and I personally have already bought an earlier title by Hockensmith. This is really the best of the genre – a good story, well told; strong, clever writing; good pacing; memorable characters; and an ending that isn’t too saccharine. Viva the Amlingmeyer Brothers!
