We think we want to read about people but really we keep reading these machines. Like novels that crank mechanically along, arousing us and finally ending up with gas attacks or euthenasia. Because the thing about writing about people is that they just keep on living. One of the characters in Cody James' The Dead Beat notices this and says "I just don't see how I'm going to get through another fifty years of this crap, just so I can die." But this book does not do machines: the elegant solution taken by this book is to get in and out under the cover of a strange visitor, comet Hale-Bopp during its 1997 fly-by of everything we know.

Adam, a meth addict lives with his best friends in a stereotypical cockroach junkie shack in San Francisco. And yeah, each character has a little shtick so you can tell them apart (gay, germ freak, rocker)(and I am glad of it, especially in a book of this short length.) The shtick of the lead character is that he is a writer with writer's block. And despite the fact that he does a lot of drugs in the book, it is clearly the writer's block that unravels not only his life but those around him, since he just seems to be on his usual dosage. Late in the book he figures out what his problem is: He doesn't know who he is anymore. He is 'the writer' and he can't write.

Except… who is writing this book? Sounds like him. What he doesn't know is that Cody James is stealing his words and making this book. Perhaps she is on Hale-Bopp, sitting in its smeared time, stealing Adam's identity so she can be the writer instead and survive.

Anyway, look… this book is great. I read James' other novel, Babylon, first and it's hard not to see this book as a lighter treatment of some of the same struggles with the alternating madness and banality of life. It is lighter, but only in the way coal is lighter in the fire than in the mine it came from. In some ways the banter and the quirks of the characters make it harder to see them suffer. But, that said… hey, it is only a book and the characters are very funny. Things like the throwaway lines about Morrissey or Munchausen's had me laughing aloud: the dialog combines the exhausted humor of a night that never ends with the polish that a truly first rate writer brings. Reading the book as a writer I was jealous of the incredible efficiency of the writing: don't be fooled by the fact that it is made of a lot of stuff-like events, there is not a wasted word here.

This is not a junky book, although it totally is. Because you'll be saying to yourself, okay I did go to sleep last night, and I didn't puke on a cockroach but what did I do? Exactly.

This is a thrilling read in a way that no thriller can reach, although eventually blood and fire do turn up.

The book leaves off with no particular conclusion, moral or solution. But Cody James is still alive, still writing. And that – and this book- is as marvelous as any comet.

….

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UPDATE:

The eBook version of this book is now available in all the major formats for $2.99 via Smashwords at www.smashwords.com/books/view/25574

The print edition will be published on November 1st by Eight Cuts press and you can only get it from them. The initial print run will also include limited edition versions, hand numbered with extra material. The UK price is 6 pounds, but they will send it anywhere. They really care about their books.

Details at http://eightcuts.wordpress.com/collaborate/coming-in-2010/the-dead-beat-by-cody-james/