4 out of 5

HCC-016

I feel like I’d run into a rut of somewhat average HCC books, but Hamilton’s ‘Night Walker’ was a great refresher course in the power of a good story, as well as showing how different elements of romance and mystery and even war story can be effectively filtered into a cohesive pulp.  Part of what makes ‘Walker’ successful, though, is that it doesn’t give us too much of any one course.  It’s very true to its leads’ narrative, surprisingly so, leaving many things vague in the same way we would when recalling details of a story we experienced.  So David Young, having abandoned a navy post when called back to war, has flashbacks of being aboard a sinking ship, but these are just dribbled in at effective times to stumble Mr. Young on his way to unraveling his part in a seeming kidnapping scheme.  Who’s been kidnapped?  Why – he has.

Picked up hitchhiking, Young gets a rushed story about being hunted as a Communist by the driver – Larry Wilson.  Then Larry conks him on the head and Young is waking up in the hospital, face bandaged like the mummy, and being called… Mr. Wilson.

First – this is a setup that only works in the pulps.  And there are pieces of the story that slot together later that only work in books, and would seem silly in a film, even though they’re absolutely believable when presented in the desired context.  Some of the relationships that develop come about a little quickly, but fiddled with in Young’s thoughts, it makes sense.  Try portraying it on screen, though, and it would feel forced.  What Hamilton can’t quite pull off as effectively is the main crux on which the story initially hangs – that Young doesn’t speak up at the hospital when he’s called by the wrong name.  There’s some back-pedaling involved, that he figured fleetingly it could be an escape from the war, that there was an element of the mysterious, an initial draw to Mr. Wilson’s wife… which are all legitimate reasons, but it’s odd that the thought process is kept on hold, initially.  Every other step Young takes is reasonable, but that first one was something of a doozy.

And for better or worse, this unsettles what follows, which is about 100 pages of Young piecing together who knows how much about identity, and the general Why of it all.  It just eats away at you, not quite getting David being sold on this whole ordeal so easily.  Hamilton helps us along… by being a great writer.  His zeroing in on the perfect detail to sum up a scene, as well as his excellent sentence structuring that never felt leading or repetitive, make reading the tale a breeze… and an interesting breeze, despite the initial skip over reason.  Some of the scene setting gets a little clumsy – we’re stuck to one house for most of the story, and while each room breathed with reality, I had trouble stitching the actual layout of rooms together – but again, Hamilton is capable of glossing over this by holding our hands through the gaps until we’re back on solid ground.

But what really knocked this to a step above was, yeah, the story.  When the pieces finally start to fall into place and Young gets what he thinks is the upper hand on What’s Going On, it’s terrifically exciting, and there are some awesome surprises in store that just make you slap your forehead at how well its pulled off.  Due to the time of writing, perhaps, the specifics of the Communist involvement get a little wishy-washy, but again, gist understood.

I had a really fun time with the book, and felt rewarded by the experience of progressing through the pages.  Not an easy feat.