Craig Terlson

So here’s the thing, I don’t like the film Heat. I think it’s overrated and overhyped. The good news, this book by Thomas Trang ain’t it. It’s way better. Like five stars better.

Dark Neon & Dirt is a complex

So here’s the thing, I don’t like the film Heat. I think it’s overrated and overhyped. The good news, this book by Thomas Trang ain’t it. It’s way better. Like five stars better.

Dark Neon & Dirt is a complex tale with fleshed out and full dimensional characters (as they should be.) What I mean is that you’re dipping into some real lives here, or so imagined… me not knowing professional thieves or crime detectives. But you feel the authenticity here, even more so in the city they dwell in. It’s an Ellroy type of L.A., or maybe it’s Chandler’s L.A., or Robert Towne’s… it doesn’t really matter. If I knew the city more, I’d see how real it was, but it doesn’t matter because it all feels real. Like really real. Ok, enough of that.

I love a good arrow structure in a novel, where two characters are living their separate existences, but you know they are on a crash-course, and someone is gonna end up dead or going to jail, or both. (Shut up, I’m on a roll.)

Nguyen the pro-thief starts the novel out with a bang, a set-piece on the street of a heist going way wrong, almost like that DeNiro/Pacino film… but it isn’t! In fact, there are nods to the film in the book that I wish the author would have left out. That’s probably my bias showing. Ok, it is. But here’s the thing, there’s way more interesting things at work here. I became deeply invested in Nguyen’s backstory, which is expertly weaved into the narrative. He’s like one of those super-criminals, ice-cold, but still charismatic. Some reader remarked on a similarity to the Thomas Crowne Affair, and Steve McQueen would fit here… if he was a part-Vietnamese, and an ex-army bomb expert that is.

And then we come to Monroe the super-detective. I say super because the dude is smart, and not because Trang says he is smart… we know it. Again, backstory is woven in an authentic way that gives the book propulsion. I will admit there were times in the later middle of the book that dragged, but I think that’s because of the complexity. This is a book that requires careful reading, or things get missed. I missed some. And I know on my second read, which I am planning, I probably won’t see a pacing problem at all. So y’all slow down reading this one.

Both characters have a deep loneliness within. They ignore it, but we can feel it. I think that’s what draws me to them, a much deeper sense than your usual tropey good-cop, better thief set-ups. At first, I was rooting for Nguyen the thief, but I grew a tender spot for the Peckinpah-esque screw-up of a life Monroe the cop was leading.

Thomas Trang knows his way around a sentence. His prose is crafted as tightly and smoothly as a drill used by an expert safe-cracker on a solid steel 7-ply titanium safe. I made that up. I have no idea what I’m talking about. But the author does! Which made me suspicious. How does this guy who doesn’t live in L.A. know so much about the city? Or more so, how does he know so much about high-tech crime, both the doing of it, and the solving of it. If I ever meet this guy, I’ve got some questions. I’m coming for you T.T.

Anyway, I might have digressed, and not said enough about the book. The hell with that, read the other reviews. I’m here to rave about the writing. There is so much good in here. Great metaphoric descriptions like, “Donny Fingers could jump for joy and get stuck.” Or, “Finnegan laughs in a booming fat-guy voice you could rest a tray of shots on.” And I love the deep references that IYKYN (boomers, ask your grandkids), “All we know for certain is the car was red. Maybe we should bring Ferris Bueller in for questioning.” Or, “The dark features and clipped stubble scream moneyed Eurotrash…”
I also really love fresh language, and Dark Neon and Dirt uses it as its main currency. “… a two-story Craftsman in a quiet cul-de-sac shaped like a teardrop that looks out over L.A.”

I could say a lot more about this book. It’s worth reading twice, but I’ll end with this snippet of diners at a Denny’s. “Inside is the usual mix of people allured by the hot food and bright lights. Families with kids at the table, young couples talking and looking at their phones. Truckers that have grown roots at the counter bullshitting with the waitress. Others with disintegrating lives and silent stares out the window at the passing traffic, either lost in memory or trying to forget. A synecdoche for America.”

I mean, C’MON! Right?
Go read the thing.