Martin Amis (1949–2023)

When I read Patti Smith's M Train I was amused by how much time Patti spent watching Law and Order and other police procedurals. It seems so out of character for the godmother of punk. Still that knowledge and her straightforward depiction of her viewership was charming. Apparently Martin Amis was spending his evenings exactly the same way as Patti, That seems even more out of character for this pretentious and oh-so-literary bad boy. I just assumed that he spent every evening drinking too much scotch with Christopher Hitchens and stumbling out of New York and London bars in the wee hours to bang MFA students rather than writing. The things we don't know.

There is no question that Amis can write, but he clearly knows nothing about police or about women that he has not seen on network television. The novella stars two women, one the cop investigating the murder and the other the victim. To say that both are objectified and crafted to suit a very binary view of women is an understatement. I will say that if he were alive someone could tell Amis that hot women are not all happy and that women who choose to to not marry or have children do not turn into Dirty Harry.

You have to go a long way for a criticism of America to piss me off and an especially long way for a criticism of American policing to piss me off, but here we are. I want to believe that he meant this as a criticism of American police procedurals, which is fine, but if he did intend that he failed. I get that the "I'm the job" view of law enforcement is a popular myth, and I get that he was trying to write noir, but his stab at noir was C+ work and so insufficient to support this comic book depiction of police behavior and prowess.

What we have here is a shodily crafted book based upon zero research, or knowledge of the subject matter, or any attempt at nuanced characterization that appears to have been tossed off while sitting in a Lazyboy with a tin of split pea soup and a remote control. So disappointing.… (more)