I read incessantly and have been a writer for 54 years, now. I explore these Amazon bargain titles through BookBub and have found some stunning novels for so little money that I wind up feeling like I stole them. I'm horrendously picky about what I choose to continue reading, after maybe the first 25 - 100 pages. I quit the books often, whether I paid anything or not. I admit to starting a new novel with antennae aquiver. If I find bad grammar, anything gratuitous, lots of undetected typos, bad dialog, I'm out.
The first of the Cal Rogan series I read was Cabal, which was listed as free in my daily BookBub bargains. I read the blurb, clicked over to Amazon, and downloaded it, as always with no expectations. At first, the tone reminded me of Colin Conway's "The Long Cold Winter": both set in this region where I live, both tragically burdened, conflicted detectives, both stumbling through their daily lives and work while wondering if any of it is worth it, all overlaid with the off-center, absurdist, angst-ridden character quirks common to most everyone in America's Pacific Northwest and Canada's Southwest corner.
As opposed to Conway's Dallas Nash, French's Cal Rogan's burden is of his own making. He's a junkie but even that has a complicated genesis. He became one in trying to empathize with and understand the heroin and other addicts he busted in his job as a detective with the Vancouver (BC) PD. He hit up once, at the urging of a friend, and happened to have that personality and physiology that is prone to addiction almost instantly. His heroin cravings cost him his job, his wife, and a very young daughter and he STILL could not stop.
In the first book, "Junkie", Rogan investigates the murder of one of his closest friends and realizes that the other addiction that he carries is police work. He's as compelled to solve his friend's murder as he is to shoot up and the two needs drive the entire book's pace and rationale. In French's hands, Rogan is as unvarnished a character as any I have ever found. He, like all junkies, would sell his soul for his next hit or to quit heroin altogether. He's forced into the seedy underworld of Vancouver's East Side, chasing the next buy and into the sterilized world of the city's movers and shakers to find a killer. He belongs to neither world but has found a begrudging sympathy for the other wretches he meets on the East Side and is continually having to revise his preconceptions as he learns more about them as something other that shadowy wraiths, seeking shelter and drugs.
French grants Rogan only marginal sympathy and refuses to whitewash his many sins and failings. His evocation of junkie life is stark and unsettling. He conveys the reality of the drug sharpening its claws on Rogan's very bones and whipping him mercilessly, like some demonic, sadistic jockey, empty of compassion for its conveyance and hell-bent on riding Rogan's flesh, bones, and spirit until its mount dies and is discarded, before moving onto its next victim. Rogan's struggle to simply remain functional as he obeys his other obsessive need to solve his friend's murder is both heart-breaking and exasperating. We desperately want him to beat the heroin and he simply cannot...and those of us who have never been addicted are totally unequipped to understand his mania. Empathizing with him is difficult but ultimately worth the struggle.
There is so much flesh on California Rogan's tortured bones that he is as vivid in the mind's eye as any casual acquaintance we may know. He is compelling and magnetic at the same time as he's off-putting and the frisson is the framework for a truly transcendent character.
I have my own personal pantheon of mystery writers from whom I read anything and everything I can find. James Lee Burke, Lee Child, Robert Crais, Michael Connelly, John Connelly, Robert B. Parker, John Sandford, and maybe a dozen more. I am compelled to add Robert P. French to that list, at least through two and a half books of the Rogan Series. French's command of plotting and characterization and especially the dialog coming out of his characters' mouths is genuinely masterful. The pacing of the books falls somewhere in the continuum of Burke and Michael Connelly' Bosch novels, and Lawrence Block's Matt Scudder series. I cannot say that "Junkie" was perfect, for one simple reason: by the time it come to the unmasking of the killer, French had really eliminated everyone else but the killer. The perpetrator was literally the only one left who could have done it, unless he was willing to do the shaggy dog story thing of introducing a brand new character at the last moment. But that's a minor flaw and the ride to that destination was an exceptional entre for this series.
I plan to read all the Rogans and need only one or two more of the caliber of these first two to grant French that special cred that's labeled, in my head, "Trusted to Deliver, Every Time."
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Reviews with images
Brilliant
I’ve just finished reading Robert French’s book Junkie and find it hard to believe that this is his first novel. As both an author and writing coach, I have become a critical (make that discerning) reader of other people’s work and evaluate it based as much on its application of the tools of good writing and character development as on the plot and storytelling. In Junkie Mr. French has done an outstanding job on all counts. The story is compelling and believable. The characters are rich and well-developed, and his use of introspection added great depth. His use of the shifting first-person narrator was also creative and well-done. I even thought it was brave of him to forego the obvious happy ending regarding Cal Rogan’s immediate future with his ex-wife, daughter the VPD and save something for future books. I’m looking forward to reading another Cal [Rocky] Rogan story.
Top reviews from other countries
Gayle Siebert
Junkie is recommended for all mystery/thriller lovers!
Reviewed in Canada on July 30, 2018
