“What a country, America. A lunatic asylum, without enough attendants or tranquilizers.”
Wet Work - Christopher Buckley's international thriller about an American billionaire turned obsessive maniac. Where are the attendants and tranquilizers when they're needed most?
The author told an interviewer writing Wet Work was "the worst writing experience of my life. The words flowed like glue. I rewrote it five times. I don't know why it was so hard -- maybe because I don't read thrillers."
I suspect Christopher Buckley’s difficulty also arose from the fact that Wet Work is a novel of obsession. Recognizing the two master storytellers spinning tales of obsession, Ernesto Sabato and Tommaso Landolfi, were reclusive misanthropes spitting their venom as they wrote fiction at the opposite end of the literary spectrum from Mr. Buckley’s other novels, his difficulty is most understandable.
But I'm glad he persevered. Wet Work is a cracking good novel that continues to speak to us today.
The tale is framed thusly: superrich Charley Becker lost his wife to illness and his son to drunk driving. His heart now belongs to Natasha, his one and only grandchild. Charley doted on and hovered over Natasha all through her childhood, adolescence and early adulthood.
However, forever wishing to strike out on her own, Natasha chooses to live in a ramshackle apartment in a seedy Lower East Side neighborhood and pursues her acting career. Her latest role on stage proves a disaster - the city’s leading theater critic writes a scalding review of Natasha’s performance.
Poor Natasha; she's so, so upset. Director Tim comes over to her apartment, insists she improves her acting (she plays a cocaine addict) by experiencing firsthand what it’s like to be high on cocaine. Natasha initially refuses (she’s never taken drugs) but, for the sake of theater, snorts a line of South America’s finest. Within minutes, Natasha is dead.
Tim panics, leaves, and afterwards concocts an alibi, says he was at a nightclub with Ramírez at the time Natasha took cocaine. Tim forces Ramírez to go along with his alibi since that “Puerto Rican piece of shit” sold the cocaine to him in the first place.
Charley Becker’s grief runneth over. But not long thereafter, Charley’s anguish and sorrow transform into anger and a thirst for revenge. Charley knows many people throughout the government, military, and, in this case, police force, and when Charley finds out Tim’s alibi contains flaws and he and his team can piece together the truth, sayonara Tim. Likewise Ramirez and his Hispanic buddies who deal drugs.
But then Charley Becker goes further, much further, his inner heart of darkness takes over - revenge turns into unflinching obsession. Charley the billionaire intends to employ the full force of his wealth and connections to hunt out everyone along the cocaine trail, everyone he deems responsible for the tragic death of dear Natasha, everyone from street dealers and middlemen in New York and Miami right down to the growers, producers and ultimate drug lord in Peru, hunt them out and sentence them all, every single one, to on-the-spot execution.
What an adventure, one that takes Charley and crew, armed to the teeth on his yacht, up the Amazon. Incidentally, the novel's title refers to killing so close up the killer gets wet with the victim's blood. "I killed them close up, with my own forty-five," Charley tells a priest, "Close enough to get wet. Wet work, that's what they call it. It's an actual term."
So much action, so many killings. Here are several Wet Work callouts:
Backstory - We learn Charley was an orphan subject to physical and emotional abuse, an orphan raised by Catholic nuns in the Southwest. Each chapter offers another facet of the billionaire's background and character. In this way, Christopher Buckley presents a well-rounded protagonist, a crusty, callous gent, for sure.
Multiple Narratives - The story pops back and forth between Charley's chase and police and military chasing Charley, one Charley chaster being Senior Agent Frank Diatri of New York City Drug Enforcement. Go get 'em, Frank.
Familiar Names - Charley's hired hit-men are Bundy, Rostow and McNamara, names from the Nixon years. Also, that theater critic is E. Fremont-Carter, so close to Eliot Fremont-Smith, a one-time tough as nails leading New York Times book reviewer.
Sophomoric Sycophants - "This is Sensitive City, here, John. I don't think it's going to do us any good if, if, you know, here we are doing the war on drugs and cashiering out front-line soldiers." The dialogue of American officials is a hoot. Roger Ramjet cartoons, anyone?
Details, Details, Details - Turning the pages, we learn much about things like weapons, the military, cocaine production, art, government bureaucracy and various forms of life along the Amazon River.
Showdown - Face to face with Charley, drug lord El Niño talks with pride about his taking revenge on the US by flooding the world’s wealthiest and most powerful country with cocaine. “An amoeba that gives you diarrhea is nothing next to an alkaloid that makes people kill themselves and each other for it.” Sounds like highly educated El Niño has internalized Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. Seen through the lens of the many tragedies in the US wrought by cocaine coupled with mass exploitation, mass destruction and mass murder committed throughout all of Latin America, Wet Work makes for one grim, unnerving story.
Salsa Satire Seasoning - Keep in mind, we're talking humorist Christopher Buckley here. Through all the tracking and shootings, be prepared to laugh out loud on nearly every page. Here's a batch of samples to serve as a taste test:
“The ascots tied around the necks were wrong, somehow, like silk scarves on pit bulls.”
“I spoke to his ex-wife, the most recent one. He’s got four. She told me he’s a mercenary and he kills people and doesn’t report the income.”
“Suckled by a sow, now there’s man who’s starting from scratch.”
“And there’s, you know, a lot of people are going to be cheering him on. The Rich Man’s Bernhard Goetz.”
“Somewhere in the jungle they were wearing cashmere blazers and ascots and whatever else rich people wear. Bermuda shorts? That would be a sight, Diatri thought, natives sitting around the fire arguing over how to make a really dry martini.”
Takeaway Message - In his New York Times review back in 1990 when the novel was first published, Andrew L. Yarrow wrote, "Simply put, not enough is at stake. One wishes that Mr. Buckley had aimed more clearly at his true target, the recesses of venality and the corruption of the American soul." I completely disagree with Mr. Yarrow. Casting the spotlight on the cartoonish, bullheaded mindset of Americans along with an entire American society that has turned its back on the wisdom traditions, Greek philosophy comes immediately to mind, Wet Work hits the bullseye.
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*Note - The quote at the beginning of my review is taken from Christopher Buckley's novel, Boomsday
American author Christopher Buckley, born 1952
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