Floater

by Lucius Shepard

Detective William Dempsey of the New York Police Department is having a bad time of it. Having endured -- along with his brothers in blue, Manny Pinero and Evan Haley -- a months-long homicide trial for the inadvertant (or was it?) shooting of Haitian immigrant, Israel Lara, he's been abandoned by his fiancee, deemed unfit for duty, and is sinking into an oblivion of vodka and pills. Then there's that little problem with his eye. A floater, his optometrist says. Nothing to worry about. Microscopic bits of protein adrift in the humor that cast shadows on the retina. But Dempsey's worried. For one thing, instead of dispersing, the floater continues to grow, occluding his vision and causing disturbing hallucinations. For another, his partner, Pinero, is behaving strangely and there's the suggestion that the floater may not be a harmless opthamological incident but an emblem that signals a peculiar form of vengeance and the imminence of a voodoo god. As he tries to determine what is happening, Dempsey's investigation leads him from rave culture to santeria ceremonies in storefront temples and, ultimately, to a circumstance that may have cosmic implications and a truth that lies hidden in the deepest sub-basements of his own mind.

Genres: Horror, Fantasy

150 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Brief biographies are, like history texts, too organized to be other than orderly misrepresentations of the truth. So when it's written that Lucius Shepard was born in August of 1947 to Lucy and William Shepard in Lynchburg, Virginia, and raised thereafter in Daytona Beach, Florida, it provides a statistical hit and gives you nothing of the difficult childhood from which he frequently attempted to escape, eventually succeeding at the age of fifteen, when he traveled to Ireland aboard a freighter and thereafter spent several years in Europe, North Africa, and Asia, working in a cigarette factory in Germany, in the black market of Cairo's Khan al Khalili bazaar, as a night club bouncer in Spain, and in numerous other countries at numerous other occupations. On returning to the United States, Shepard entered the University of North Carolina, where for one semester he served as the co-editor of the Carolina Quarterly. Either he did not feel challenged by the curriculum, or else he found other pursuits more challenging. Whichever the case, he dropped out several times and traveled to Spain, Southeast Asia (at a time when tourism there was generally discouraged), and South and Central America. He ended his academic career as a tenth-semester sophomore with a heightened political sensibility, a fairly extensive knowledge of Latin American culture and some pleasant memories.

Toward the beginning of his stay at the university, Shepard met Joy Wolf, a fellow student, and they were married, a union that eventually produced one son, Gullivar, now an architect in New York City. While traveling cross-country to California, they had their car break down in Detroit and were forced to take jobs in order to pay for repairs. As fortune would have it, Shepard joined a band, and passed the better part of the 1970s playing rock and roll in the Midwest. When an opportunity presented itself, usually in the form of a band break-up, he would revisit Central America, developing a particular affection for the people of Honduras. He intermittently took odd jobs, working as a janitor, a laborer, a sealer of driveways, and, in a nearly soul-destroying few months, a correspondent for Blue Cross/Blue Shield, a position that compelled him to call the infirm and the terminally ill to inform them they had misfiled certain forms and so were being denied their benefits.

In 1980 Shepard attended the Clarion Writers’ Workshop at Michigan State University and thereafter embarked upon a writing career. He sold his first story, "Black Coral," in 1981 to New Dimensions, an anthology edited by Marta Randall. During a prolonged trip to Central America, covering a period from 1981-1982, he worked as a freelance journalist focusing on the civil war in El Salvador. Since that time he has mainly devoted himself to the writing of fiction. His novels and stories have earned numerous awards in both the genre and the mainstream.

Reviews

[Jack Tripper · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m always on the lookout for some supernatural-tinged noir, and this scratched that itch nicely. They can be hard to come by, and even harder to find the blend pulled off successfully, as having a paranormal “solution” to a mystery can feel like a bit of a cheat if it’s not clear from the get-go that something unnatural is at play. Shepard infuses a weird, ominous atmosphere into the proceedings from nearly the very beginning that signals to the reader that they’re not in Kansas anymore.

The story here concerns a detective in early 2000s, post 9/11 NYC who, while on leave after being involved in a high profile police shooting where an unarmed man — a known member of a Santeria cult — is killed, is suddenly stricken with a strange “floater” in his eye, one that seems to be growing larger all the time, affecting his vision. It soon appears to be no ordinary eye affliction, however, but something more sinister, possibly involving a conspiracy of secret voodoo practitioners throughout the city. And Detective Dempsey can’t trust anyone.

Shepard does an excellent job of grounding the reader in realistic depictions of investigations and the underground nightlife of the city, so when the strangeness ramps up, it’s all the more unsettling. I don’t want to say too much more considering it’s only 150 pages, but just know that you’re in good hands with Shepard, as there aren’t many authors out there who are better at injecting the weird and inexplicable into (somewhat) mundane reality. It’s intense and creepy throughout, and it was hard for me to stop reading until I got some answers. And even then I wanted more.

Recommended for those who don’t mind their hardboiled detective tales mixed with a heavy dose of horror.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This starts out as weird noir and slowly becomes a visionary piece of fantasy. A dark portrait of post-911 New York and plot involving police shootings and Voodoo mythology. The handling of imagery, characters, and dialogue makes Shepard seem tailor made for Hollywood (except for that fact he is not lobotomized.) Probably some suit read some of his film reviews.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strange. Weird. Creepy!! Lucius Shepard has a way of getting inside your head and planting something nasty there. So there's no way I should even want to finish this book, let alone like it 4 stars worth. But, there you are. Read at your own risk.

[Derek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reread. Shepards prose is incredible, his ability to draw damaged characters one of his key strengths.

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/floater.htm[return][return]"Dempsey hated the mornings before his drugs kicked in." From the very first sentence, you know this is going to be something special. The protagonist, a New York cop who has recently been acquitted of murder after shooting dead a Haitian immigrant in controversial circumstances, begins to dig deeper into the background of the incident and finds himself enmeshed in a world of strange Caribbean voodoo cults where nothing and nobody are quite what they seem. The "Floater" of the title is a speck of protein in Dempsey's eye, which impedes his vision -- or perhaps may allow him to see what other people can't.[return][return]Shepard's sensuous prose is at its best in the tropical settings of Life in Wartime, "Radiant Green Star", "Crocodile Rock" and "The Jaguar Hunter"; although New York is much further north, he manages to find the required climate for his habitual style in raves, in Santeria ceremonies, and in two memorable scenes set in steam-filled bathrooms. But even in other settings, the words sing from the page: we read of "the neon script pizza joint mad cabby hip hop ambiance of millennial rush hour Brooklyn", of "rows of apartment buildings with blank reflectionless windows, like the disapproving faces of gigantic maiden aunts hidden behind thick spectacles".[return][return]At one point the plot appears to be getting too clever for its own good, as an academic expert who appears to be straight from central casting explains to Dempsey that he is participating in a standard quest narrative. But my expectations were blown away almost by the next sentence, and although the story does indeed climax with Dempsey participating in a cosmic conflict, the ending is sufficiently subversive that I actually went to the lengths of contacting the publisher to make sure my copy had been printed correctly.[return][return]Of course, I need not have worried. This is yet another classy production from PS Publishing, with an introduction by Jeffrey Ford which puts the story in the context of Shepard's other writings. Ford thinks that this novella "will be considered one of Shepard's best". I agree. (It's a pity that the title will cause sniggers on this side of the Atlantic from the lavatorially minded.)

[Bingo · Rating 2 out of 5]

This short novel had a good start, and it offered a couple of real gems early on. It gets interesting for a while, but in its entirety I thought it was just okay. The promise of the dramatic cover art, the inviting tone of the first few chapters, and the image of George Bush waiving to Stevie Wonder, is what I'll gladly take away.

It seems certain that this story would be more entertaining if presented as a half-hour TV episode. The novelette format, in my opinion, doesn't carry off the effect that author had in mind. If we were talking about a choice between presentation formats, I could argue that someone actually made a mistake here.

Speaking of the author, he seems like a smart man, clear-minded and clever, highly articulate and talented, but maybe he knows a few too many words for his own good. While I am fresh across the finish-line, my first thoughts on FLOATER are about how busy the writing was. A few of the word choices were annoying, too. Somewhere there must be a list of words that writers should never use, and while only a couple of these are found here, I seemed to mind the occasional jolt.