Austin Davis came up with a great title for his debut novel: “Shoveling Smoke.” And the basics of the story sound promising. Narrator Clay Parker, a burnt-out tax lawyer, flees Houston for a small town in East Texas hoping for peace, simplicity and an honest living.
Instead, he finds that he has traded big city corruption for small town corruption with his new law partners. The two eccentric and out-of-control country lawyers, Gilliam Stroud and Hardwick Chandler, can hardly find the time to show up at the office amidst their full schedules of drinking, practical jokes and kinky sex.
The book gets off to a brisk and colorful start. Parker’s first assignment on arriving in Jenks, Texas is to bail his boss (Stroud) out of jail, and his second is to help at a murder trial.
Stroud, a famous old lawyer well past his prime, routinely tries his cases while dead drunk and wins most of them anyway. His partner Chandler is a grossly overweight, fast talking sex addict who spends much of his time dodging bullets shot by angry husbands.
The plot is ostensibly about a fraud case involving a horse dealer by the name of Bevo Rasmussen. But the real focus is the character portraits of the two crooked but likable country lawyers. Both characters have an appealing irreverence and spontaneity about them, and their antics keep the story moving. Their wild negligence constantly leads the firm to the brink of disaster, and newcomer Parker finds that his main job is to keep them sober and sane enough that they can do their work.
A primary weakness of “Shoveling Smoke” is that it goes too far over the top. Davis relies overmuch on whimsical names and “outrageous shenanigans” to lend the story color, stretching the narrative past the line of believability.
He goes to great lengths to keep us reading, throwing in episodes like the one where Chandler gets beaten up by an emu while wearing a bat suit, or the one that has a bobcat jumping out of a suitcase. Generally, the tactic works, but before long it begins to overwhelm the story line.
And that tactic wouldn’t have been necessary if the book had more authentic color and a substantial plot. Since it’s an explicitly regional novel, one would expect to learn more about the peculiarities of East Texas and its people. But with a few exceptions, all we get is broad caricatures with scant local detail.
Aside from Chandler and Stroud, the characters seem pasted in to serve the superficial plot. The narrator himself may be the weakest character in the book, serving as little more than a bewildered and naive foil for his two bosses.
Overall, the book is a light, breezy read, but it’s short on the insights or literary skill that would push it above the level of an average novel. Though the story has some clever moments and curious details, they are too few and far between to make “Shoveling Smoke” worthwhile.
Brian O’Keefe can be contacted at [email protected]