The Dime
Intriguing premise, for starters, lesbian cop moved from liberal northeast to Dallas. What used to be liberal Dallas, these days? Staunchly conservative. Apparently. I wouldn’t know.
“This has to be good,” I said to myself.
So far, it has the cinematic appeal, and about the same draw, same pacing, as an hour-long TV police procedural. Except, better snark, and maybe more humanly drawn characters, especially the protagonist.
“In their ads, Dallas real estate agents—their expertly Photoshopped head shots appearing next to the featured houses—all seem to have variations on the same rigid, immobilized visage, probably acquired from the same cadre of surgeons: graduates of the Wind Tunnel School of Medicine.” Page 100.
I remember the great Joe Ely, from the stage in Ft. Worth one night, remarking about Dallas.
First blush, reminded me of The Fixer series. No, wait, begs a comparison, plot, story, not style, to No Country for Old Men. Bodies are starting to stack up like a cord of wood.
Dallas and Ft. Worth are the most unlikely of twins, separated at birth, and they show how geography can shape the landscape of the mind. The Wild West, the wild and wooly west of myth and lore? Starts in Ft. Worth. Ft. Worth is “cowboy.” Dallas? Business suit and commerce. Dallas is cosmopolitan. Pro-business, and these days, apparently, the transplants make it quite conservative.
West Texas starts in Ft. Worth and East Texas starts a few moments east of Dallas. Part of that is behind the Pine Curtain, plays a pivotal role in the story.
Delving into the Deep East Texas stuff, I can’t help but think of Joe R. Lansdale, and his sense of the bizarre, macabre, and otherwise otherworldly. Not to mention sick and twisted — as the last hundred pages, last quarter of the story, demands to be finished all at once. Not showing this stuff on TV.
Then, too, there is the breathtakingly refreshing gay (or Gay, or Lesbian) take on Texas — a thoroughly unique voice and point of view with local icons skewered.
It is good.
Bet a sequel is already on its way. I can only hope.
