Onyx reviews: Blood Standard by Laird Barron

Reviewed by Bev Vincent, 05/27/2018

Isaiah Coleridge is the kind of mob enforcer who keeps other mobsters in line, doling out brutal and often terminal punishment to any who stray from the stringent—albeit byzantine—rules of the organization. For several years, he has been an imposing presence in Alaska, the last Frontier and home to a vigorous smuggling operation. His impressive stature, thanks in large part to genes inherited from his Maori mother, is often sufficient to invoke fear and compliance, but he's good with a gun, a knife and his fists and isn't afraid to take a beating in the service of doling out a worse one in return. He describes his work as "CPR in reverse"—stop the breathing, start the bleeding, induce shock.

His soft spot for animals gets him in trouble—he beats up a powerful mob leader involved in the unauthorized slaughter of walruses for their ivory. This sort of insubordination should have marked him for death—and that almost comes to pass—but he has friends in high place, so he is instead exiled to the Adirondacks region of New York state, where he is instructed to lie low. He's been put out to pasture quite literally: his safe house is a farm popular with hippies and New Agers, where he does manual labor to pay for his keep. Coleridge is okay with that. He's never been afraid of getting his hands dirty.

However, he knows that the mobster he humiliated will come gunning for him sooner or later, no matter how "safe" is he supposed to be. To make sure he is in the loop with the local mob, he agrees to do some small (but violent) favors for them.

Trouble seems to find Coleridge wherever he goes, though. In this case, it's a rebellious teen, the granddaughter of the couple who run the ranch, who goes missing shortly after Coleridge interrupted a violent encounter between her and three local thugs. Because she's black and has a history of running away, the police aren't motivated to expend much energy looking for her. That leaves Coleridge to pick up the slack. His investigation puts him in contact with several racist groups, including the Sons of Iron and the White Manitou. He is forced to prove himself the only way he knows how: by taking a beating or giving one.

Coleridge has a complicated past: his mother died under mysterious circumstances while canoeing with his father. Although the incident was ruled an accident, Coleridge always suspected his father of killing her. He has been estranged from the retired Air Force colonel for years, but circumstances force him to re-establish contact.

He gets as good as he gives over the course of his self-assigned investigation into the disappearance, and he spends a significant fraction of the novel recovering from the various beatings, stabbings and the other bodily insults he receives. His body isn't tattooed, like that of many Maori, unless you count the myriad scars from his violent life.

He's not a lone wolf, though. He has a helpful sidekick, the farm's handyman, a hard-drinking, paranoid war vet named Lionel who has terrific connections to suppliers of illicit weapons in the area. And no noir crime novel would be complete without a femme fatale. In this case, it's a part-time trapeze artist slash librarian named Meg who catches Coleridge's eye shortly after he arrives in New York and with whom he embarks on a cautious romance. Meg has secrets, and she's wary of getting too close to such a violent man. After their "first date" at a mob-run resort, it's a wonder she wants to stay involved with him at all.

Barron, best-known for his award winning horror fiction, has embraced a new genre with gusto. Coleridge is a criminal with a heart of gold (sometimes) who embraces violence and has been given a new lease on life through his exile. Blood Standard is rife with sardonic, existential wit, the life blood of the genre. References to Greek gods and mythology is, however, a little heavy-handed and excessive. There a lot of plots and subplots to keep track of—a lot of moving parts, any of which could lead to Coleridge's demise—but it's a comparatively brief and breezy novel that has the feel of a pilot for a series. Coleridge's return would be welcome, indeed.