One of the fun things for me about going to mystery conferences (literary conferences in general, but I much prefer the mystery ones) is discovering new-to-me writers. Sometimes I meet them through writers I already know, sometimes they are on panels with friends, and sometimes they’re on a panel with me.
I was asked, very late, if I would fill in on a panel about humor and mysteries as moderator because the original moderator had dropped out. This was pretty late; I don’t think the program even listed me as the moderator, even. I didn’t have time to read any of the books, which I felt absolutely horrible about, and my free time was very tight–I’m not sure I remember precisely why, or what was going on in July/August this year (and am not entirely sure I want to remember because it might have been something bad) but I reached out to all of them and asked them if there were any questions they wanted to be asked (whenever I moderate, I always ask this–there are questions I would love to answer but never get asked; and if you ask a writer a question they really want to answer–they’re going to be very animated and passionate in their response, which will engage the audience). It was also an incredibly hot and miserable summer here in New Orleans, and just surviving it in general was asking a lot of all of us. I knew I would have a lot of anxiety about the panel, but it was an afternoon panel and I knew I could do some good research that morning…which was when, to my absolute delight, I discovered that three of my panelists were debut authors…and I love nothing more than being on a panel with new writers.
Imagine my delight and surprise in doing my research that J. D. O’Brien’s debut novel, Zig Zag, was about a marijuana dispensary heist. I made sure to get a copy (I bought a book from each of my panelists–my God, what a dream panel they were! It was easily one of the best experiences I’ve ever had moderating.) and after finishing Lou Berney’s stoner noir Dark Ride, I thought Zig Zag would be an excellent pairing,
And I was correct.
![](https://gregwritesblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/zig-zag.jpeg?w=726)
When Harry checks in at Reduced Rent-A-Car, Ken from the desk escorts him to the lot anf unfurls a rinkydink red carpet leading to the driver’s side door of a Ford Fiesta. An added feature of the white-glove service package. The dingy carpet is matted flat and Harry sees the rest of his life laying there in front of him. Thirteen steps to the gallows.
He removes his Stetson Sundowner like it’s made out of lead and hunches in behind the wheel. “I think the last guy must have smoked in here,” he says.
Ken looks over the inventory sheet.
“Let’s see if we have something else for you.”
“Don’t bother,” Harry says. “I just don’t want to get bit for it.”
And so we meet Harry Robatore, a burned out Texan who now runs a bail bonds business, dresses like a cowboy, and drinks a lot of liquor and smokes a lot of weed. Harry is the primary antagonist of this tightly-plotted genre-bending novel–it’s about crime, and criminals, but it’s definitely not a mystery; if pressed to classify it, I’d call it a heist caper novel, like those of Westlake and Block. (It reminded me a lot of The Hot Rock, and this is not a bad thing.) On the other side of the equation of the book is our femme fatale (I could so totally picture Barbara Stanwyck in this role) Capri, a hard-luck girl who wants to pull herself out of poverty however she can doing whatever she needs to with the amorality of Phyllis from Double Indemnity–she is a schemer with dreams, and whatever she has to do to get those dreams is justified by the dream itself. She’s been a stripper and a shot girl and now is clerking at a weed dispensary in Van Nuys called Big Smoke–and Big Smoke isn’t exactly about following the law, either. A huge delivery of Acapulco Gold is coming into the dispensary, and she sees stealing the weed and selling it as her way out of the hole she is currently in. She convinces her boyfriend–a not-so-smart dude name Teddy, to help her, and that’s when everything starts going haywire. Teddy is the son of a friend of Harry’s, who owns a rundown tacky bar Harry frequents, and when Ted is caught–because he’s not very bright; he successfully steals the weed but leaves his bag with his wallet in it behind, goes back for it and then is caught–he bonds the bail. Ted and Capri decide to hit the road and try to sell the weed to dispensaries or weed edible manufacturers, and thus begins an epic road trip with mayhem and insanity at every turn–with any number of people chasing after them, and Harry coming along behind to try to get his money back from the court.
I really enjoyed this book. As someone (I don’t remember who) once said, in rebuttal to the claim that criminals generally aren’t very smart, “the smart ones don’t get caught.” No one in this book is particularly smart; and while I hesitate to call them losers per se–societal misfits is more accurate; they cannot function successfully in society the way others can–this entire book is about bad choices and bad timing and bad decisions. But it’s incredibly clever, ironically funny, and even though he’s really not the best person in the world, you can’t but root for Harry; his character and who he is really reminded me of James Crumley’s The Last Good Kiss–the style of the writing, the characters, the world-weary cynicism–which isn’t easy to do.
I really enjoyed this, and look forward for more from O’Brien.