Prime

Poppy Z. Brite

There's something thoroughly satisfying about reviewing Prime during lunch on a day when I'm sitting down to, well, not a gourmet meal, but about the best I can do given my current equipment and financial status. Hey, its got grilled fennel bulb as a side dish. I love fennel. It's subtle, sweet, tasty, and when you eat it for dinner, you wake up the next morning still having a slight taste of sambuca on your breath. In other words, it's rather like Poppy Z. Brite's new novel.

Well, okay. "Subtle" may be pushing it a bit far. But this is Brite, a woman whose idea of "subtle" has, at times in the past, run to kicking the reader in the face with a boot that doesn't have a steel toe. I have acquaintances who are still traumatized after reading certain passages in Exquisite Corpse ten years ago. I get the feeling I'm going to have a difficult time getting them to read Prime, but I'm still going to try.

Prime, Brite's third novel following the exploits of Rickey and G-Man (after The Value of X and Liquor), opens with Liquor doing good business, but its financial backer, Lenny Duvetaux, being investigated by New Orleans' notoriously crooked DA. Rickey wants to by Duvetaux out in order to keep the restaurant's name as clean as possible. This might well be helped by the offer of ten grand Rickey's just gotten for doing some consulting work at a restaurant in Dallas. There is, however, a fly in the ointment; the head chef at the place has something of a spotty past with Rickey. Complications, etc.

First, kudos to Brite for not jumping on the current "include recipes in your fiction" bandwagon. That said, this may be the first book I've read where I really want the recipes. Does that foie gras crème brulee really exist? How do I make it? (And this coming from someone who doesn't even like foie gras.) It sounds divine. And you're certainly not going to get a veal cheek recipe from the latest Tamar Myers mystery, buddy.

As you may have surmised, Prime is a novel for (though I hesitate to use the term) foodies. I can pretty much guarantee that the more orgasmic you get over the thought finding a black market supplier for wheels of real, unpasteurized Danish havarti or traditional haggis, the more you are going to revel in the joy that is this novel. (If your idea of a gourmet meal is White Castle, you are likely to find yourself hopelessly lost.) Yeah, okay, there's a good deal of dramatic tension in all the right places. And there's even a mystery to be solved, though it really doesn't get geared up until well into the second half of the novel. That the reader is unlikely to care is a testament both to the power of good writing about food and the considerable aplomb with which Brite can wield a pen. There's action when necessary. But all the way through this book, I kept thinking to myself that it could all have been absent, and I'd still have loved it. Just a book on the day-to-day lives of chefs working at a restaurant, coming from this particular pen, would have been just fine with me. Part of that is, well, I love a good veal cheek as much as the next guy. Part of it is that Brite is good enough at pacing that she can make a description of what someone at an expediting station does just as readable (and even more memorable) than a description of the aftermath of a suicide. The rest of it stems from the fact that the characters are well-drawn enough that you don't have to have followed them throughout the series to get to know and care about them (as evidenced by the still-strong sales of Liquor, despite the relative obscurity of The Value of X). You toss it all in a tortilla, roll it up, and you have one hell of a novel. If you're lucky, and ask nicely, you might even be able to get it with a tomato salad and a side of Courvoisier-glazed stewed apples.