Howard_Creech's Full Review: Ron Faust - Dead Men Rise Up Never
South Florida crime thrillers have been a staple of escapist literature since John D. MacDonald published the first Travis McGee adventure back in 1964. MacDonald used McGee to lay down the ground rules for a whole new fiction genre. South Florida is where laid-back "save the manatee" old Florida runs head on into the rapacious developers, unending streams of tourists, and commercialism run amok of new Florida. After almost fifty years the South Florida crime novel continues to attract new readers - the genre's exotic settings, eccentric characters, and weird plots have become a dynamic component of the popular literature landscape.
The action in Ron Faust's Dead Men Rise Up Never unfolds around Dan Shaw, a retired U. S. Army CID investigator. He's a part time law student and works as a paralegal for an unconventional semi-retired Bell Harbor judge. A high profile local attorney named Tom Petrie hires Shaw to locate a missing (and presumed dead) heir, Peter Falconer. Falconer is due to inherit some really big bucks on his thirtieth birthday, but he's vanished while making a controversial film in the Florida Keys. His last known address is a missing houseboat. Shaw manages to find the houseboat, but what he discovers when he goes aboard exposes some sinister secrets. The waters surrounding the houseboat conceal even darker secrets. To further complicate matters Shaw's employer is having an affair with their client Susan Falconer, Peter's sister.
When Shaw returns to Bell Harbor, Petrie informs him that Falconer has been abducted by modern day pirates who want $750,000 in bearer bonds for his safe return. The bad guys are as mismatched a pair of villains as ever came down the pike; a charismatic, overtly macho, and very vengeful thug named Raven Ahriman and his gay upper-class English playboy sidekick, Charles Angleton. After the ransom delivery goes painfully awry, Ahriman imprisons Shaw, Falconer, Susan, and Petrie below decks on a rusty old tramp steamer and sends the poorly maintained boat (on auto pilot) right into the eye of a hurricane. How Shaw and company survive the hurricane and eventually get the upper hand with the pirates ties up all the loose ends nicely.
The sub-tropical climate and promised-land appeal of South Florida seem to promote the sort of quirky one of a kind heroes created by novelists like Elmore Leonard, Edna Buchanan, Carl Hiaasen, Laurence Shames, Tim Dorsey, Les Standidford, James W. Hall, Randy Wayne White, Bob Truluck, Tom Corcoran, and Ron Faust. Faust has a master storyteller’s eye for detail and a journalist’s ear for idiom. His characters are fully fleshed and given rock solid back-stories, but they're all a bit amoral and their behavior often slides perilously close to the wrong side of the law. Faust's action sequences are evocatively described and the tale is told in taut, spare, gritty first person prose that is reminiscent of the best of Charles Willeford. Dead Men Rise Up Never is about violence, greed, and retribution, but it’s also about redemption and second chances. Like many of the South Florida crime story genre’s best writers, Faust doesn’t fall back on standard plot devices – so readers should expect the unexpected.
About the Author
Ron Faust has been writing quirky thrillers for more than 30 years. He is the author of In the Forest of the Night, When She Was Bad, and Lord of the Dark Lake. Dead Men Rise Up Never is the first book in the Dan Shaw series - the others are Sea of Bones and Blood Red Sea. Dead Men Rise Up Never was nominated for a 2005 Edgar Award in the BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL category.
About the Book
Dead Men Rise Up Never
by Ron Faust
Bantam Books 2004
Paperback/$6.99/352 pages
ISBN: 978-0-553-58655-8 (0-553-58655-6)
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