Memorable, vivid tale. This is my first Patricia Highsmith and I can assure you, it will not be my last.
A Dog's Ransom, a searing portrayal of crime and punishment in New York City when it’s a matter of life and death. And to think, it all started with an ominous note threatening a well-to-do middle age couple living on the Upper West Side with their miniature poodle, Lisa.
I'm confident Patricia Highsmith, master of the craft, composed her story in a way to surprise a reader at every step. As to not give away too many tantalizing details, I'll make an immediate shift to critique one of the book's main characters - tall, handsome, blonde, twenty-four-year-old Clarence Duhamell. By so doing, I’ll also focus on the author’s keen insights into social and cultural currents at play in 1972 urban America.
Clarence Duhamell, Cornell University graduate (major in psychology), Army veteran (Placement Counselor for draftees), following his honorable discharge, winds up in a personnel department for a large NYC bank, a job where his intelligence and judgement count for nothing, a 9 to 5 routine boring him to tears. By chance, Clarence reads brochures about joining the NYC police force, the variety of police work involved, the benefits, the pensions, the challenges, the service an individual can render their city.
Patricia Highsmith detected 1972 was a transitional year in many respects - the end of the Vietnam War caused a downturn in the US economy and for the first time in the nation's history, a mass of college graduates could not find jobs. Many grads, especially with sociology and psychology degrees, entered professions where they were the first college graduates to hold such positions – prime example: the police force.
It’s within this context Clarence, an only child raised in Astoria, Long Island, joins New York’s finest and becomes Officer Duhamell assigned to a tough downtown East Side precinct. As a rookie, he spent a year pounding a beat, feeling utterly useless although several times he had to run for cover and walkie talkie squad cars. His request for a transfer was granted and he became part of an Upper West Side precinct. However, once in his new location, Clarence found the atmosphere less than agreeable: his fellows and supervising officers were not so friendly. Also, a large issue loomed - in Patricia Highsmith’s words: “Clarence had always known pay-offs existed in the force, and he wasn’t trying to reform anyone or to inform on anyone, but it became know that he didn’t take kickbacks and so the cops who did – the majority – tended to avoid Clarence. He wasn’t fraternity material.”
The author’s penetration insight: being a police officer is much more than showing up and doing a good job; the NYC police force is a subculture unto itself, many officers the sons and grandsons of police, acculturated from a young age into the world of police as the ultimate goal and way of life – fraternity, benefits and pensions included. Clarence doesn’t realize his college degree (from an Ivy League school!), idealistic attitude and suburban white-collar manner and speech all pose a direct threat to the officers he works with – a threat to their self-identity of what it means to be a police officer and part of the force.
Several other Clarence tidbits: he had an apartment on East 19th Street but spent most nights with his hippie girlfriend Marylyn Coomes, age twenty-two, at her place on Macdougal Street down in Greenwich Village, an arrangement not exactly acceptable by Police Department rules but Clarence always made sure he slept in his own apartment those nights he was on emergency call; he considered himself politically left, although not as radically left as Marylyn; if he didn’t like being a policeman in another year, he planned to quit. Now, does any of this sound like a real, dedicated member of the force? You bet it doesn't - more reasons to alienate everyone around him.
One day, listening to the conversation at the station between Captain MacGregor and a Mr. Ed Reynolds about his kidnapped dog and a ransom, Clarence decided to take independent action: he arranges a visit with Ed Reynolds at his Upper West Side apartment. Words are exchanged and Clarence feels the emotional pain of Ed and his wife Greta. Knowing the department will not give a missing dog too much attention, Clarence promises Ed and Greta he will see what he can do.
Now Clarence is a man with a mission, a way to really make a difference in someone’s life. He strikes out on his own and has a measure of success but then it happens: comprehending just how much Ed and Greta love their dog Lisa, Clarence makes a big mistake, something any real police officer would definitely never do. This mistake leads to a string of mistakes, including one colossal mistake.
A number of critics have said it would be more accurate to call Patricia Highsmith an author of punishment fiction rather than crime fiction. Recognizing the deep personal and social divide between Clarence and other staunch members in the department, officers like Manzoni and Santini, how much punishment would they relish inflicting on college boy Clarence?
A Dog’s Ransom is chock full of suspense, a novel that will keep a reader turning the pages to the last sentence. Two highlights worth mentioning: Clarence’s girlfriend Marylyn offers a captivating study of a flowerchild’s view of the police – fascist pigs, ignorant slobs like that wop Manzoni. And Clarence’s visit to Bellevue Hospital where he sees “bandaged people were pushed along in wheelchairs or on rolling tables. Other people waited on straight chairs against the walls, and had lugubrious or fearful expressions on their faces. Arms, legs, feet, faces, necks were in bandages or plaster casts. How on earth did so many people get injured, Clarence wondered. And yet, he ought to know. Bellevue, also, wasn’t the only hospital in Manhattan. The amount of pain in the world was really appalling. And why did most people want to go on living? This thought shocked Clarence, not for any religious scruples, but simply because to Clarence it had seemed normal to want to live, until this instant.”
Again, this is my first Patricia Highsmith. The great news is I have many other of her classic tales to look forward to - Strangers on a Train, The Talented Mr. Ripley among their number.
American author Patricia Highsmith, 1921-1995
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