DROWNING IN THE DESERT: A Nevada Noir Novel

DROWNING IN THE DESERT: A Nevada Noir Novel
BERNARD SCHOPEN
University of Nevada Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$21.00 paperback, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Desert stillness meets the cacophony of Las Vegas.

Norman “Fats” Rangle, an ex–deputy sheriff, operates a horse stabling and excursion business with his brother and sister-in-law on their family ranch in the small rural community of Blue Lake, a few hours outside of Las Vegas. By chance, high on a southern Nevada mountain range, Fats discovers the wreckage of a plane that crashed two years earlier. Although he reports his find to the sheriff, he does not disclose that someone had already been to the crash site—evidence that Fats deliberately destroyed.

Soon, Fats is tracking back and forth between Las Vegas and Blue Lake in a search for a missing cousin, a briefcase full of cash, and, finally, for a killer. Along the way, Fats also begins to understand that he’s searching for himself and his place in a rapidly changing West.

Angry and alienated, Fats distrusts everyone he meets, from sleaze-merchants and political power brokers to two women: one he wants to believe in, a retired judge; and the other, a police sergeant, he can’t quite believe isn’t deceiving him. After all, in this Nevada, corruption is a given. Everybody lies. Much is uncertain—motives, loyalties, affections. But in Drowning in the Desert, one thing is certain: water is a precious resource that can both kill and be killed for.

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My Review: One thing I think people in the rest of the developed world do not "get" about the western US is the absolute centrality of water to all local politics. At no time is the subject of the water supply, water rights, and the technology of water treatment far from the center of local talk.

I enjoyed this noir novel as much for its setting as for its story because Author Schopen gets this in his native-westerner bones. Born in Deadwood, South Dakota—how could he not? I also appreciated the fact that his sleuth is an angry, bitter man because he's been turfed out of the job of Sheriff he sought by someone more physically attractive. His record was good...the other guy would not be called "Fats" as a nickname so he was ghosted out of the job.

After Fats' cousin and ranch hand vanishes after saying he was going into Vegas to see a girl, Fats needs to find out what happened and get him back...if he can. Investigating comes naturally to Fats after twenty years in law enforcement so off he follows the trail, reluctantly it must be said as he'd rather just live his life. What he discovers is surprising. A crashed small plane near Blue Lake, which seems odd because in his job he should've known about it even though it wasn't in his former jurisdiction. Reporting his discovery to the new, attractive sheriff gets him nowhere.

Except in the sights of the people who lost the plane. It had illicit cargo that they badly want back. And in following his cousin to Vegas, Fats discovers he was boasting of having a lot of money. The penny drops...now the disappearance, the sudden interest in him from people he'd never dealt with before, and the local water wars the current sheriff isn't working to resolve all make sense.

It's fun for me to revisit the West in a realistic way. I found the necessary exaggerations that make novels fiction relatively mild in this story. If you expect noir to be gory, there's no need to fuss, this is a very unviolent example of the genre. We're following Fats as he pieces together the trail his cousin blazed then the skulduggery the politicos are up to in order to profit from Las Vegas' insatiable need for water.

Resolutions in noir fiction get to be morally ambiguous. It is part of their charm. I enjoyed this story across multiple axes. I'm going to recommend it for Yuletide escape reading because nothing needs more escape from than Togetherness and Fats' ambiguity about rescuing his cousin reinforces the fact that family is complicated. Sometimes maddening. But in the end, no matter how much your inner Schweinhund urges you to stay on the sofa, you're rewarded for doing the right thing...even if only internally.

Satisfying puzzle, terrific setting got right for once.