Sap: A Mystery

Michael Nolan is a professor of English at the Memorial University of
Newfoundland.

John Swan (pseudonym of Kerry J. Schooley) begins his mystery by quoting
Raymond Chandler. It’s a mistake. However good Sap is, and it has
vigour, it is not of the quality it imitates. The plot, which depends on
coincidence as its ancestors do, is simple. The detective, an ex-cop,
John Swan, meets a beautiful but possibly murderous woman. They take a
weekend trip and a body is found in the hotel parking lot next to their
car. Swan reconstructs his lost weekend, interviewing acquaintances at
an off-track betting parlour and tracking the murder victim’s teenage
daughter. Violence of various kinds follows.

Familiar pulp motifs are used throughout: the haggard detective, the
brutal cops, the wisecracking denizens of the underworld, the wayward
daughter, the corrupt capitalist, the glaze of alcohol. What is new is a
misanthropy that opposes the older hope of justice and occasional
decency in an unfair world. No white knight walks these mean streets,
the femme fatale is more skank than seductress, the Hammett-like parable
is just a ragged tale. This unrelieved nastiness is matched by the
style: “Shit stink rises like a departing soul.” “Pussy-whipped
isn’t necessarily bad. If you’ve got to be whipped, Meg’s
pussy’s the way to have it.” If that appeals to you, Sap has 188
pages of it.