He’s already a phenomenon, this Don Winslow: When his novel “Retribution” was published at the beginning of this year, after reading it, one had the impression that the 61-year-old American writer was letting the real self off the leash, as if it were reactionary Fach his real specialty. In this novel there is no more talk of the horrors of the Mexican drug war, of “Days of the Dead”, the novel with which Winslow suddenly became famous in Germany in 2010; and no more trace of Winslow’s subculture appeal, of the surfers, slackers, dealers and stoners that populate other of his books. “Retribution” is about the war on terror, modern warfare and the technology and handling of new weapon systems, about Rambos, elite soldiers, real men, evil Islamists and no less evil because rich sheikhs.
But instead of following on here, Winslow has changed the subject for his latest novel “Missing New York” (which is no longer published by Suhrkamp but by Droemer for the first time in this country) and has hired a new investigator, Detective Sergeant Frank Decker. He initially does his duty in Lincoln, Nebraska, and is supposed to find a missing seven-year-old named Hailey.
After Winslow had already announced that he would write a whole series of Decker novels, the suspicion arose that “Missing New York” might be too tailored as an overture to the investigator. Fortunately, the novel isn’t. In medias res, it’s about police work when a child disappears. The first 100 pages of this novel are more like a documentary fiction than a thriller. Chapter by chapter, Winslow describes the procedure and experience of the police in such a case: “Almost fifty percent of the children who are killed by kidnappers die in the first hour after they disappear,” it says.
Or: “Most child kidnappers live close to their victims”. Or: “If a kidnapping is suspected, you roughly divide your people into three groups – command, emergency services and auxiliary staff”. Sometimes you long for information about Decker, his quirks, his private life and so on. Winslow uses this sparingly, however. He cleverly distributes the Decker portrait over the entire length of his novel (Iraq war veteran, marriage in dire straits, do-gooder with a train into obsession) and prefers to concentrate on his story, which also picks up speed after the somewhat elongated intro: Another girl is kidnapped and then found dead, a suspect confesses, but wants nothing to do with the case of the first missing girl. Hailey remains missing and the case is filed.
“Missing. New York” is a conventional novel compared to “Kings Of Cool” and “Zeit des Zorns”
Only Decker doesn’t accept it. He quits his service, as does his marriage, and travels all over America in search of Hailey. At the latest here you are there as a reader, and also with your thoughts not least of all for songs like Soul Asylum’s “Runaway Train” or the Maddie case, which has not yet been clarified. Frank Decker finally ends up in New York City, a fashion photographer and a model, strangely like seven-year-old Hailey, appear extremely suspicious. That little Hailey is still alive and where she is can be found out again and again through short, italicized chapters. In it, the child ponders how it should be robbed of its identity and that in any case its stuffed horse Magic watches over its original identity. These passages are of course very conventional (as a rule, in this way, especially in Scandinavian crime novels, the perspective of mentally ill serial offenders is taken), as well as Winslow’s plot, the other form with the many short chapters and also the style of his novel are quite conventional and free of surprises.
The latter is a big plus, especially when you think of Winslow novels like “Kings Of Cool” or “Zeit des Zorns”. They contain heaps of extremely short sentences, and it takes time and effort until the case, story and characters are exposed. Instead of elliptical fireworks, lots of short sentences and slang, “Missing New York” has long sentences that are always close to Frank Decker and his world of thought. And there are no two opinions on child abduction, child abuse and child prostitution anyway; It might even be okay if a colleague from Decker says, when he shows him a New York children’s stroke, along with pimps and customers: “Here you want to play Dirty Harry and just go through with the machine gun.”
By the way, you don’t have to be a prophet to see that Winslow Decker’s Iraq war experiences are still working out – against the background of his previous novels and the variety of subjects, you can be sure that Winslow will not write another novel like “Retribution” .
Don Winslow: Missing. New York. Novel. From the American by Chris Shepherd. Verlag Droemer Knaur, Munich 2014. 395 pages, € 14.99.
–
