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Cicero Grimes #1
Bad City Blues
Deux frères ennemis, Cicero et Luther Grimes. Le premier est psychiatre et exerce dans un centre de désintoxication. Le second est un ancien du Vietnam reconverti dans le trafic de drogue. Dans la ligne de tir, Callilou Carter, une ex-prostituée en cavale avec un million de dollars appartenant à son mari ; et le capitaine Clarence Jefferson, un flic corrompu et sadique. Dans le décor crépusculaire de la Nouvelle-Orléans écrasée de chaleur, les deux frères vont jusqu'au bout de la haine.
" Tim Willocks installe une histoire de meurtre, de sexe, de drogue avec une belle virtuosité. Il faut lire ce roman noir déjanté, hystérique, unique. " Lire.
Traduit de l'anglais par Élisabeth Peellaert.
" Tim Willocks installe une histoire de meurtre, de sexe, de drogue avec une belle virtuosité. Il faut lire ce roman noir déjanté, hystérique, unique. " Lire.
Traduit de l'anglais par Élisabeth Peellaert.
Mass Market Paperback
First published April 10, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
July 17, 2016
Another out-the-door read, I began this in order to get it off my shelves. I'm trying to downsize books, and I felt that this would be a good read-and-donate, so away I went.
I may have to reconsider this plan of action.
While this is the second Willocks book I've read, it's the first of his to be published. Green River Rising was my first, and it's undeniable that while that book is more polished, Bad City Blues is more viscerally interesting. There's certainly a sense that Willocks is working out ideas here, and the writing sometimes veers close to formula, but in genre fiction, that's hardly a cardinal sin.
Willocks' writing here is resolutely Southern-fried gothic violence. There's touches of Chandler and Cain, with sweaty balls; religion, robbery and the fuckery love leads you to are foremost. It's lurid and full of fucking and fists, with an obsessive level of detail: no jet of semen or drop of blood are unaccounted for. There's hard choices and much harder men. Indeed, once you discount the family drama of the tale - the recrimination-laden story of the two Grimes brothers and their father - what you have is an examination of Bad Shit Men Do To Each Other. The book becomes a kind of battle royale: who will survive? Who will be left?
Parts of Willocks' life have undoubtedly made their way into the work. Cicero Grimes, for example, is a mysterious doctor who eschewed the high life of elective surgery to work with junkies of his own selection; the author likewise has worked with addiction. There's a second dan black belt in Shotokan karate in his history, and the discipline - and associated body-breaking moves - shows up in the text. Authenticity is here, and it doesn't have the usual feeling of exhausted noir remove you'd expect in the genre.
The book acts less as a narrative about a crime and more as a portrait of three men. They're all shambolic fuckers you wouldn't want to come across, well, anywhere. The three - a doctor, his returned-vet brother and a cop of prodigious gut and torturing ability - intersect over the proceeds of a bank heist, funds whipped from under the nose of a religious fool by his wife, who has links to each man. While Callie, the female character, is drawn fairly poorly - she really just features as a driver for the narrative - the three men are fearsomely well developed, and not as one dimensional as you'd expect, given the terrain. Here's an example of Willocks' prose, describing one of the brothers. It's about as much character development as we get, but it's very telling.
What's interesting to me about this work is that it has reminds me of Garth Ennis' writing for Preacher. Both authors hail from the UK, and both write about America and American characters from the position of tale-tellers who undoubtedly love the forms they're working in (and the stereotypes they examine) but who are forever outside the tent by dint of their places of birth. Extend that logic a little far and we end up in the cul-de-sac which says only psychopaths can write about psychopaths, but I think it works in favour for Willocks: the South portrayed here is supercharged. There's intense focus on detail, but it's described as if underwater, recorded by a naturalist in a diving bell.
The Bad City of the title is a place where all the barriers break down, and we see what's left. It's a place I suspect it's better to see others visit than to spend time in yourself. Willocks is a pretty good guide, you know.
I may have to reconsider this plan of action.
While this is the second Willocks book I've read, it's the first of his to be published. Green River Rising was my first, and it's undeniable that while that book is more polished, Bad City Blues is more viscerally interesting. There's certainly a sense that Willocks is working out ideas here, and the writing sometimes veers close to formula, but in genre fiction, that's hardly a cardinal sin.
Willocks' writing here is resolutely Southern-fried gothic violence. There's touches of Chandler and Cain, with sweaty balls; religion, robbery and the fuckery love leads you to are foremost. It's lurid and full of fucking and fists, with an obsessive level of detail: no jet of semen or drop of blood are unaccounted for. There's hard choices and much harder men. Indeed, once you discount the family drama of the tale - the recrimination-laden story of the two Grimes brothers and their father - what you have is an examination of Bad Shit Men Do To Each Other. The book becomes a kind of battle royale: who will survive? Who will be left?
Parts of Willocks' life have undoubtedly made their way into the work. Cicero Grimes, for example, is a mysterious doctor who eschewed the high life of elective surgery to work with junkies of his own selection; the author likewise has worked with addiction. There's a second dan black belt in Shotokan karate in his history, and the discipline - and associated body-breaking moves - shows up in the text. Authenticity is here, and it doesn't have the usual feeling of exhausted noir remove you'd expect in the genre.
The book acts less as a narrative about a crime and more as a portrait of three men. They're all shambolic fuckers you wouldn't want to come across, well, anywhere. The three - a doctor, his returned-vet brother and a cop of prodigious gut and torturing ability - intersect over the proceeds of a bank heist, funds whipped from under the nose of a religious fool by his wife, who has links to each man. While Callie, the female character, is drawn fairly poorly - she really just features as a driver for the narrative - the three men are fearsomely well developed, and not as one dimensional as you'd expect, given the terrain. Here's an example of Willocks' prose, describing one of the brothers. It's about as much character development as we get, but it's very telling.
In the discipline of the army he'd found an enemy worthy of the wildness in his heart. Anything so juvenile as to try bucking the system never crossed his mind. He ate the system, made it his. He consumed the discipline like fuel. He never bitched, never hesitated, never flinched. He kept all the disobedience in his eyes where his instructors and NCOs would read it and pick up the glove and try to break him. They never did. And between the moulds of their brutality and his own internal anarchism Luther turned himself into that rare being, the superb soldier.There's an appealing sense of tension between the three men, as each is probed for weakness. The money ceases to be an issue: in a way it's about these hardest of men being dismantled to see what will hurt them the most, as physical pain is shown - most brutally - to not be the kicker. It's titanic and grim and very readable, this sweaty example of Caliban's rage.
Or, as his buddy Beckett had been fond of putting it, the controlled psychopath in search of death.
What's interesting to me about this work is that it has reminds me of Garth Ennis' writing for Preacher. Both authors hail from the UK, and both write about America and American characters from the position of tale-tellers who undoubtedly love the forms they're working in (and the stereotypes they examine) but who are forever outside the tent by dint of their places of birth. Extend that logic a little far and we end up in the cul-de-sac which says only psychopaths can write about psychopaths, but I think it works in favour for Willocks: the South portrayed here is supercharged. There's intense focus on detail, but it's described as if underwater, recorded by a naturalist in a diving bell.
The Bad City of the title is a place where all the barriers break down, and we see what's left. It's a place I suspect it's better to see others visit than to spend time in yourself. Willocks is a pretty good guide, you know.
February 20, 2012
Years back I had a day where I had little to do so first thing after breakfast I sat down to a read a bit of this paperback book Green River Rising by Tim Willocks that I had just bought after seeing it recommended somewhere. It’s the story of a prison uprising and it turned out to be one of the most downright addictive books I’ve ever read. Willocks has pretty unique style that brings a literary sensibility to the lowest depths of human nature but which forges forward with thriller plotting. I finally came up for air in the early evening having read it cover to cover in one sitting. (I had a similar reaction to Iain Banks’ Complicity, reading that in one go too.)
Not too long afterwards I saw the hardback of Blood Stained Kings and immediately bought it. It would be a little while until I managed to get hold of Bad City Blues, Willocks’ first book, but it was eventually republished as a paperback.
Kings is actually a direct sequal to Blues so it was a bit odd to read them in that order. This time I’ve re-read them the right way around.
Set in the southern states of the US, in Blues we are introduced to Cicero Grimes, ex-surgeon and shrink now making an ‘honest’ living putting criminals and other low-life through his custom detox program (Willocks is actually a specialist in addiction himself) and the corrupt police captain Clarence Jefferson. The latter is one of the most powerful and vivid characters I’ve ever encountered, up there with Hannibal Lecter. (Like Lecter he unfortunately has a bit of an destabilising effect on the novels as, though the other characters are great, they can’t quite measure up to the ‘Shithammer’). Physically huge, Jefferson is a distillation of every bad-ass Southern bastard you’ve ever read about or seen. He’s also a fiendish autodidact. And an utterly insane sociopath. Willocks seems to bring a lot of professional expertise to the latter characteristic and the tracts of the novels examining Jefferson’s thought processes are mind-warping to say the least. The action brings in Cicero’s drug smuggler brother, his ex-prostitute girlfriend and her lunatic born-again preacher husband. Everyone is after proceeds of a bank robbery.
Unfortunately Blues is not quite up to the standard of Willocks’ later work. He never goes overboard on plot but it is particularly threadbare here. There’s a protracted integration / torture sequence padded out with lashings of Jefferson’s mad philosophy that goes on for a bit too – it seems like about a quarter of the book – and whilst important to the novel as a whole it does not have to be anywhere that length.
Kings has more plot and more action. It introduces a whole load of new characters – including Grimes’ father a retired Union bruiser and ex-marine, a young female soul singer, a DA who things he’s a bad ass but he’s way out of his depth, a hillbilly pilot who’s thinking of turning Muslim – ‘you get to choose a cool name for yourself’ – and Gul, the greatest canine character in any book I’ve read. This time the maguffin they are all chasing after are Jefferson’s files on all the corruption he’s been involved plus there is a unbelievably twisted revenge story subplot.
It’s not quite as good as Green River Rising though – but then, not a lot is.
Not too long afterwards I saw the hardback of Blood Stained Kings and immediately bought it. It would be a little while until I managed to get hold of Bad City Blues, Willocks’ first book, but it was eventually republished as a paperback.
Kings is actually a direct sequal to Blues so it was a bit odd to read them in that order. This time I’ve re-read them the right way around.
Set in the southern states of the US, in Blues we are introduced to Cicero Grimes, ex-surgeon and shrink now making an ‘honest’ living putting criminals and other low-life through his custom detox program (Willocks is actually a specialist in addiction himself) and the corrupt police captain Clarence Jefferson. The latter is one of the most powerful and vivid characters I’ve ever encountered, up there with Hannibal Lecter. (Like Lecter he unfortunately has a bit of an destabilising effect on the novels as, though the other characters are great, they can’t quite measure up to the ‘Shithammer’). Physically huge, Jefferson is a distillation of every bad-ass Southern bastard you’ve ever read about or seen. He’s also a fiendish autodidact. And an utterly insane sociopath. Willocks seems to bring a lot of professional expertise to the latter characteristic and the tracts of the novels examining Jefferson’s thought processes are mind-warping to say the least. The action brings in Cicero’s drug smuggler brother, his ex-prostitute girlfriend and her lunatic born-again preacher husband. Everyone is after proceeds of a bank robbery.
Unfortunately Blues is not quite up to the standard of Willocks’ later work. He never goes overboard on plot but it is particularly threadbare here. There’s a protracted integration / torture sequence padded out with lashings of Jefferson’s mad philosophy that goes on for a bit too – it seems like about a quarter of the book – and whilst important to the novel as a whole it does not have to be anywhere that length.
Kings has more plot and more action. It introduces a whole load of new characters – including Grimes’ father a retired Union bruiser and ex-marine, a young female soul singer, a DA who things he’s a bad ass but he’s way out of his depth, a hillbilly pilot who’s thinking of turning Muslim – ‘you get to choose a cool name for yourself’ – and Gul, the greatest canine character in any book I’ve read. This time the maguffin they are all chasing after are Jefferson’s files on all the corruption he’s been involved plus there is a unbelievably twisted revenge story subplot.
It’s not quite as good as Green River Rising though – but then, not a lot is.
November 22, 2017
This is the second Tim Willocks novel I have read, after reading Green River Rising some years ago (which was turned into a film starring the late Dennis Hopper). It's quite hard to categorise Bad City Blues, perhaps as a Southern Gothic pyscho sexual torture porn fest with added violence, sex , sweat, drugs and (of course) the blues. Does this sound like the book for you? Set in the swampy overheated badlands of New Orleans, the principal characters crawl of the page and into your head like a bad dream. The writing is vivid and assured, the damage done to human bodies and minds being grimly described by the author who studied medicine and worked for some years rehabilitating drug addicts. This is an extraordinary first novel which grips you from first page to last, but perhaps should come with a health warning for those of a delicate disposition, some of the scenes depicted are particularly stomach churning. You wouldn't want to meet any of the characters in this novel but you will find it hard to put down.
July 1, 2015
«È amaro, amaro». «Però mi piace perché è amaro e perché è il mio cuore.»
Siamo a New Orleans, tra sprazzi di sole e pioggia umida, tra gente accomunata dalla violenza, dalla ricerca rabbiosa di un tesoro che si rivelerà troppo caro per ognuno.
Vicende di soldi, di torture lunghe e spiate, di lesioni al fisico e allo spirito, Bad City Blues è un viaggio nel dolore.
Tim Willocks è un grande scrittore di Noir, splendide le pagine finali di epilogo, dove ci sentiamo trascinare con la gamba ferita, tenendoci l'intestino in pancia, prossimi alla morte per arrivare alla capanna del fiume.
Mentre corri verso ovest lungo la US-90 e il dee-jay nell'autoradio ti consiglia di tenerti pronto per la peggiore tempesta dell’anno mandando in onda Bessie Smith che canta Backwater Blues , accade di parlare di amore e di violenza.
«Cos’è questo “amore”? Spiegami» disse Jefferson. «Quello di cui sto parlando è un po’ come quando mi metti quel maledetto cappuccio in testa, solo che non c’è nessuno che me lo può togliere. Significa dipendenza, bisogno, impotenza, ansia, bugie. È un disastro su tutta la linea. Un secondo prima potresti scavalcare un grattacielo con un solo balzo, e un attimo dopo vorresti cavarti i denti, sbattere la faccia contro un muro di cemento, impiccarti a un gancio. Cristo. Non so di che cavolo sto parlando. E tu?»
Di violenza : Da quel che poteva capire, e va detto che ce la stava mettendo tutta, la violenza trasudava da ogni poro della lercia, sudata cotenna di questo mondo. Cercare rifugio nelle consolanti illusioni dell’amore, del successo e della giustizia gli sembrava un’agghiacciante presa per i fondelli, anche se nessuno sembrava interessato a capirlo o a sapere perché era così.
I personaggi principali percorrono le proprie strade lastricate di sofferenza e affanno sorretti solo da motivazioni distruttive: Cicero Grimes, il medico dei reietti, insegue la vendetta; suo fratello Luther scambia per amore il proprio egocentrismo. Un odio insanabile tra il primo e il secondo, di mezzo una donna ormai morta e una seconda, Callie, che ribalta i ruoli ma manovra entrambi, mossa da nient’altro che dalla brama di denaro. Infine Jefferson, uno psicopatico con una divisa da poliziotto e una melma nera che gli si agita dentro e che trasuda brutale da ogni poro della pelle, incontenibile e corrosiva, e bisognosa di farsi comprendere e accettare da qualcuno nella vita.
Alla fine si sopravvive, con un prezzo enorme, guardando un domani non troppo migliore ed un passato che non si potrà scordare.
Non resta che ascoltare George Jones e Conway Twitty sul mangianastri, dormendo il sonno dei giusti.
Siamo a New Orleans, tra sprazzi di sole e pioggia umida, tra gente accomunata dalla violenza, dalla ricerca rabbiosa di un tesoro che si rivelerà troppo caro per ognuno.
Vicende di soldi, di torture lunghe e spiate, di lesioni al fisico e allo spirito, Bad City Blues è un viaggio nel dolore.
Tim Willocks è un grande scrittore di Noir, splendide le pagine finali di epilogo, dove ci sentiamo trascinare con la gamba ferita, tenendoci l'intestino in pancia, prossimi alla morte per arrivare alla capanna del fiume.
Mentre corri verso ovest lungo la US-90 e il dee-jay nell'autoradio ti consiglia di tenerti pronto per la peggiore tempesta dell’anno mandando in onda Bessie Smith che canta Backwater Blues , accade di parlare di amore e di violenza.
«Cos’è questo “amore”? Spiegami» disse Jefferson. «Quello di cui sto parlando è un po’ come quando mi metti quel maledetto cappuccio in testa, solo che non c’è nessuno che me lo può togliere. Significa dipendenza, bisogno, impotenza, ansia, bugie. È un disastro su tutta la linea. Un secondo prima potresti scavalcare un grattacielo con un solo balzo, e un attimo dopo vorresti cavarti i denti, sbattere la faccia contro un muro di cemento, impiccarti a un gancio. Cristo. Non so di che cavolo sto parlando. E tu?»
Di violenza : Da quel che poteva capire, e va detto che ce la stava mettendo tutta, la violenza trasudava da ogni poro della lercia, sudata cotenna di questo mondo. Cercare rifugio nelle consolanti illusioni dell’amore, del successo e della giustizia gli sembrava un’agghiacciante presa per i fondelli, anche se nessuno sembrava interessato a capirlo o a sapere perché era così.
I personaggi principali percorrono le proprie strade lastricate di sofferenza e affanno sorretti solo da motivazioni distruttive: Cicero Grimes, il medico dei reietti, insegue la vendetta; suo fratello Luther scambia per amore il proprio egocentrismo. Un odio insanabile tra il primo e il secondo, di mezzo una donna ormai morta e una seconda, Callie, che ribalta i ruoli ma manovra entrambi, mossa da nient’altro che dalla brama di denaro. Infine Jefferson, uno psicopatico con una divisa da poliziotto e una melma nera che gli si agita dentro e che trasuda brutale da ogni poro della pelle, incontenibile e corrosiva, e bisognosa di farsi comprendere e accettare da qualcuno nella vita.
Alla fine si sopravvive, con un prezzo enorme, guardando un domani non troppo migliore ed un passato che non si potrà scordare.
Non resta che ascoltare George Jones e Conway Twitty sul mangianastri, dormendo il sonno dei giusti.
March 14, 2017
Set piece carnage and redemption in the urban and You can smell the rot.
Good pacing throughout. Set piece carnage and redemption in fetid New Orleans and the Louisiana swamps. You can smell the rot.
Good pacing throughout. Set piece carnage and redemption in fetid New Orleans and the Louisiana swamps. You can smell the rot.
June 11, 2012
Polar noir, très noir et glauque à souhait. Ça fait du bien parfois de lire un livre tellement noir qu'il correspond parfaitement à sa couverture en poche!
May 28, 2017
Bad City Blues è un mezzo pasticcio: troppi personaggi in troppo poco spazio, troppi flashback e introspezioni dove non c'è tempo neanche per una scena d'azione in grazia di Dio. In definitiva l'esordio letterario di Tim Willocks è piuttosto deludente.
January 31, 2013
This amazing character driven novel is a white knuckle ride through the steamy underbelly of New Orleans and its environs and centres around the sado-masochistic relationship between two larger than life characters; police captain Clarence Seymour Jefferson and psychiatrist Eugene `Cicero' Grimes, the latter named after a character played by Richard Boone in the Paul Newman western, Hombre. Jefferson, a kind of literary love child of Hank Quinlan, the malevolent force at the centre of the Orson Welles film, Touch of Evil, and Mike Tyson is central to all that ensues in this drama of truly Jacobean proportions.
It opens with Jefferson being called to a `domestic' featuring Callie, the once drug addled ex-prostitute wife of born again evangelistic bank chief, Cleve Carter, who has threatened to blow out her brains for being the provider of `insider' information leading to a bank heist involving the theft of one million dollars. Understandably disturbed she manages to escape with her head intact and sets off to meet her lover and heist mastermind, Luther Grimes, Eugene's brother, for the split. With that amount of cash involved Jefferson silences her husband before setting off to find Callie. In doing so he brings into being the series of cataclysmic events that form the basis for the story that subsequently unfolds.
Brilliantly written and told at blistering pace this scandalously ignored first novel is definitely not for the faint hearted - don't say you haven't been warned!
It opens with Jefferson being called to a `domestic' featuring Callie, the once drug addled ex-prostitute wife of born again evangelistic bank chief, Cleve Carter, who has threatened to blow out her brains for being the provider of `insider' information leading to a bank heist involving the theft of one million dollars. Understandably disturbed she manages to escape with her head intact and sets off to meet her lover and heist mastermind, Luther Grimes, Eugene's brother, for the split. With that amount of cash involved Jefferson silences her husband before setting off to find Callie. In doing so he brings into being the series of cataclysmic events that form the basis for the story that subsequently unfolds.
Brilliantly written and told at blistering pace this scandalously ignored first novel is definitely not for the faint hearted - don't say you haven't been warned!
January 15, 2015
I love some of Willock's other works. This one I didn't. It's a first novel, and he's working out his style, a combination of baroque, lush characters/caricatures, references to psychopathology, intense sex and ultra-violence. The book has a lot of drive, but not much of a plot. He has some over the top scenes, as in "top this level of shock/violence," but they don't ring true, nor does the act that drove the brother's apart. The problem is that the guy who does the sin is not the guy who would seek redemption. Also, his characters take a level of physical punishment that would make their actions impossible--it has a cartoonish quality.
Willocks works some of the same ground in later novels - the karateka psychiatrist, the psychopathic fat man in particular - but he does them better in these later works.
He's got some powerful scenes, and some beautiful lines, but it's a ragged book.Obviously mine is a minority opinion, because the book is well liked, but I see it as a practice run on Green River Rising and Bloodstained Kings.
Willocks works some of the same ground in later novels - the karateka psychiatrist, the psychopathic fat man in particular - but he does them better in these later works.
He's got some powerful scenes, and some beautiful lines, but it's a ragged book.Obviously mine is a minority opinion, because the book is well liked, but I see it as a practice run on Green River Rising and Bloodstained Kings.
January 18, 2018
"...erano solo tante parole arzigogolate che gli davano un'illusione di serenità nei momenti più calmi."
Cupo, violento, disperato.
Un libro duro e difficile da digerire. L'avessi letto per primo, fra i libri di Willocks, forse l'avrei mollato. Ma leggendolo ora, dopo tutto il resto, riesco ad apprezzare comunque i germi di genio che già ci sono nella scrittura violenta, ma lucida di questo autore che riesce a sondare gli abissi più profondi e oscuri dell'animo umano.
Cupo, violento, disperato.
Un libro duro e difficile da digerire. L'avessi letto per primo, fra i libri di Willocks, forse l'avrei mollato. Ma leggendolo ora, dopo tutto il resto, riesco ad apprezzare comunque i germi di genio che già ci sono nella scrittura violenta, ma lucida di questo autore che riesce a sondare gli abissi più profondi e oscuri dell'animo umano.
December 24, 2012
Readers can't go wrong with anything Mr Willocks puts out there, and this, his debut is a rock solid novel: dark and brooding with characters that really grab a hold of you. As with all of his novels the dark side of mankinds soul is revealed and you're left as battered and bruised as the characters.
January 23, 2009
Edgey stuff, very brutal, very male. I really loved the pace and Cicero Grimes and his brother Luther are strangely attractive. I learned that I am not as civilised as I think I am.
March 11, 2016
Imagine if Hemingway had done Crack? This is the type of novel that would have produced. Hard, violent, dangerous, unpleasant and utterly compelling.
July 4, 2016
Willocks rocks
April 4, 2017
Granguignolesco.Una storia assurda. All'inizio sembra interessante, poi ricorda la scena iniziale di Hollywood party(quella con Peter Sellers trombettiere indiano).
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews