Jenny Siler's first mystery, Easy Money was my pick for best first novel of 1999 and I still am surprised it didn't garner more attention for this young writer based in Montana. While this second book, Iced, is not part of a series, it has some of the same knock-out features of her first book; a truly counter-culture protagonist, someone who lives on the verges of society, and a strong narrative voice, which carries you along.
Meg Gardner is just getting by, doing "repo" work, repossessing cars in Missoula, Montana. This is the first legitimacy Meg, who just turned 30, has known; a drifter who spent time in a New Mexico Prison for knifing someone, she has a history of other, pettier crimes. Meg left home at a young age, living in squats, in her car, crashing on people's floors. She still seems a bit surprised that she has returned to her hometown, since it is here that the family scandal erupted years ago when her mother shot her father. Her father lived, reduced to a child-like existence and cared for by his wife who appears to have found religion.
Meg's latest repossessed vehicle contains a briefcase which everyone seems to be after, from Russian gangsters to a very scary woman with a knife. The owner of the vehicle, Clayton Bennett (and apparently the sought-after briefcase) has just died. As Meg is threatened by various parties who want the case (which originally she'd taken into her house for safekeeping) Bennett's story gets more complicated. It seems that some years ago, he was flying a trainer plane which went down in the mountains outside Missoula. Almost immediately, Bennett was declared dead; no search really happened, and Bennett was, apparently, after all this time, obsessed with finding the craft.
While she seems to survive on beer, burgers cigarettes and booze, Meg gets by, not letting too many people get close. She does seem to accept the most eccentric behavior (like Amos, an anarchist youth who has a cable television show, "Anarchy with Amos", and who goes a bit nuts from time to time). When the man she is involved with seems to be threatened by the woman with the knife, she tries to separate from him, so he won't be endangered. She won't explain much, but that's par for the course. Meg is, in her own way, protective - of herself and of other people in this rather dreary town. But she understands loyalty, and knows when she's being given a break.
Like many mysteries that I love, ICED is a heavily-character driven book. This is not to say there is no story here; there is a fine mystery, and it's balanced by a number of characters, from Nick Popov, gangster father of the Russian kid who threatens Meg to Meg's found-religion mother. But the story here is of a person managing on the margins of society and showing us how it's done.
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Andi Shechter