The Blue Cheer

The Blue Cheer
by Ed Lynskey

PointBlank Press
209 pagesISBN 0 8095 5667 7

Reviewed by Kerry J. Schooley
from an Advance Reader Copy



Readers be warned. The Blue Cheer is a rocket, primed, aimed and ready to fire before you've even cracked the cover. Step aboard page one and Ed Lynskey sparks the jets. You are puffed wheat my friends, shot from guns so quick you'll have to reach behind for back-story like it's your hat left dangling in a Looney Tunes cartoon. And damn if it isn't every bit as funny, assuming you're not the type to turn up your nose at gunplay and gore.

P.I. Frank Johnson has snugged into the West Virginia mountains to escape the literally murderous pace of his earlier, Virginia-based practice. He has put up his boots. Cast a line. Befriended a neighbour. Together they drink Wild Turkey from the neck. What's to worry?

Only thing to disturb the peace and quiet around the steel-town of Scarab, West Virginia is Stinger missile practice at the local Blue Cheer chapter, an up-and-coming domestic terrorist militia. Like any good P.I., Frank pokes his toes into the rubble. He gets hit on the head. He gets his tires slashed and his gas tank sugared. He gets upset, but not nearly so much as when the bad guys torture and hang Jan, wife of Old Man Maddox, the ex-CIA neighbour and aforementioned, freshly minted, Johnson best buddy.

Metaphorically it's a confrontation between philosophies, the kinds that require considerable planning and enforcement versus that of your free-spirited, live-in-the-moment good ole boy. Not that Johnson and his colleagues are given much to contemplation. They're sentimental drunks, more likely to go windmilling after tilted causes. Usually guessing wrong, these ex-military honchos shoot first and drink away regrets later.

If at times it's hard to separate the hallucinogenic hyper-reality from the surreal nostalgia, don't fret it. Lynskey's in control of the levers. Trust him, though his stylistic mix is as volatile as the white lightening that used to hot rod from these West Virginia hills.

Pour yourself a shot and hold tight.


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