"Blind Fall"--haunted by the past

[AmosL]

Rice, Christopher. “Blind Fall”, Scribner’s, 2008.

Haunted by the Past

Amos Lassen

I met Christopher Rice on several occasions when I lived in New Orleans but that was before he became the mature writer that he is now. I have enjoyed his other three books but I must take off my hat to him. He has written a wonderful novel with “Blind Past” in which he mixes crime noir with psychological suspense and mystery and comes up with a first class novel. I am now a complete Chris Rice addict---but that’s a good thing. Rice has written a novel of integrity and honor and he manages just to add the right amount of gayness to make the book endearing to all people. Love is a subject that always interests and here is the story of two men—one gay and one straight, who come together to avenge the death of the man that they both loved. One man loved him with a pure and sensual love and the other loved him for the man that he was and as a comrade-in arms. They two must survive his death and go on with their lives.
John Houck is a Marine who has just returned from Iraq and is after the years in the Corps. While on his tour he was involved in a failed mission in which one of his buddies, Mike Bowers lost an eye and almost his life. Houck takes on a new mission and that is to find this guy and apologize to him but instead finds himself walking right in on what happened after this man was murdered. He runs after a guy running from the scene only to discover that he was Bowers’ lover. Houck is immediately confused as he never knew that the guy was gay.
The book, aside from being a thriller, has a great deal to say about how gays are regarded by society. When Houck realizes that the intended target of the murder was Alex Martin, Bowers’ lover, he understands that the case may have a special interest for the police and in order to repay his debt to Houck, he decides to protect Martin even though there are many issues against him. In ding so he must also change the way he believes about gays. The homosexual overtones that are present in Rice’s other novels are played down here and he substitutes them with a sense of tension that comes from the places where the characters find themselves.
The fact that the novel is set in California is important. The setting becomes a character in the novel and the geography of the state and the various locations add greatly to the atmosphere.
There are many themes here but above all is the motif of gay military service and codes of honor. Rice writes of these ideas with sublime intelligence keeping the other themes on the edges of the novel. Mixing the situation of gays in the military with a crime theme is no easy thing. What comes through is a story of heroism and cowardice coupled with a desire for acceptance and redemption for a terrible mistake. The story is real and gripping and had me flipping pages very quickly. Rice’s beautiful characterizations and exquisite prose are likely to stay with me for a long time. He is perverse yet amazing and his literature has matured with this new book.