Everything On Black
A Tortuga Review
Everything on Black, written by F. T. Grant and published by Vigilante Crime & Pulp, is a classic noir crime novel. A noir and not a mystery, for the moral standing of the characters and their eventual doom is set from the first chapter. There is no doubt how the story will end for them, the only mystery is the path they follow to their destruction.
The two main characters are a clever inversion of noir tropes: the protagonist and narrator is Kat, a female sheriff’s deputy in a small county somewhere near Chicago; and the villain of the piece is Will, an homme fatale. He is a charming and seductive failed rock star, with a hidden core of darkness, trapped in an unhappy marriage. After an on-duty encounter, Will seduces Kat and enlists her in a plot to murder his wife.
I admit, I nearly passed on Everything On Black when the blurb told me the main character was a lady cop. I’ve been burned so many times by mainstream books and films. I was afraid Kat would be a cardboard cutout, either a vehicle for social commentary or an exercise in wish fulfillment. I half expected a power-tripping girlboss character, Lisa Simpson in a police uniform, constantly belittling and outsmarting her dim male colleagues. Equally irritating is the Fantasy Action Barbie character, beloved by low-end male writers: an expert marksman and pro-level MMA fighter, kicking ass and taking names. And with the libido of a sixteen-year-old boy to boot.
Instead, Kat is a wrenchingly likable and human character, widowed at a young age and trying to live up to her cop father and brother. As the story begins, she is already walking a knife-edge of addiction and corruption. A single encounter with the outwardly charming Will is enough to push her off the edge and into a doomed spiral, every bad decision justified by the remorseless logic of the moment.
Kat and her father form one pole of the story; although he only enters the story once (and only in a brief phone call), his influence hangs over her throughout. It is never explicitly stated, but I presume she went into law enforcement as an attempt to live up to him. They seem to have a healthy and loving relationship, but her regard for him is her undoing; as her predicament worsens, her motivation for additional crimes is the fear of getting caught and shaming him.
The negative pole of the novel is the sociopathic Will, and his manipulative mother, Elaine. Their relationship is a dark mirror of Kat and her father. Will is boyish and handsome when he is seducing Kat, unstable and terrifying when she becomes a threat. Elaine, a trailer park fortune teller and prostitute, is revealed to be the mastermind of Will’s crimes. Will’s unthinking trust in her is his undoing, just as surely as Kat’s trust in her father, rather than God, is hers.
Everything On Black is a brutal but enjoyable read, as you watch a likable and tragic character destroy herself in real time. I read it in one sitting, and I hope to see more from F.T. Grant and from Vigilante in the future.