Hawaiian Noir

Just Play Dead. By Dan Gordon.
(Published Dec. 14, 1997)

Sun and sand seem incompatible with the nightmare vision of noir, but Dan Gordon shows in "Just Play Dead" that passion, lust and hate retain their power, even on Hawaii's bright beaches.

Dani Kahane is, in his words, "a Kosher-keeping scuba-diving cowboy Jew who's a conservative Republican and a former sergeant in the Israeli Army-type Jewish cop in Maui." His tale of Nora Wolfe, her lover, Chad, and her husband, Jack, is told with a mix of cultural references that can be exhilarating, if not confusing at times.

Threatened by an investigation, Jack wants to arrange a phony death that will enable him to collect his life insurance. Nora, a former prostitute turned aging trophy wife, hates Jack enough to do it for real, and she attempts to seduce her surfer boy toy into doing the deed. But Jack knows about Chad, and what follows is a cat-and-mouse game that can only dead with someone getting killed.

One can sympathize with Chad, whose verbal skills are restricted to variations on an Anglo-Saxon four-letter word. "Chad was almost Oriental when it came to language. Tone and inflection counted for much more than vocabulary." His party-hearty world of cheap dope and free sex is blasted once Nora digs her claws into him.

Running a fast 227 pages, printed with narrow margins and large type, "Just Play Dead" speeds along like a wave at Diamond Head. Dani Kahane is a fascinating character, and before the last page, Gordon pulls one last joke in his deck that promises that the scheming will continue in the sequel.