Book Around the Corner

Hell on Church Street by Jake Hinkson. 2012. French title: L’enfer de Church Street. (translated by Sophie Aslanides)

I purchased Hell on Church Street at Quais du Polar as I was intrigued by the writer and it’s published by Gallmeister which is starting to be a way to pick American literature with eyes closed and without thinking. Remember what I wrote then: In the booklet advertising Quais du Polar, each author presents themselves with a short biography and mentions their favourite book, film and writer. Jake Hinkson said that he was raised by Christian fundamentalists in the mountains in Arkansas, that he used to snuggle banned crime fiction books in Bible camp. He added that if Jim Thompson had knocked up Flannery O’Connor in a sleazy motel in Ozark, he’d be their offspring.

The starting point of Hell on Church Street is original. We have a typical ex-con trying to lie low in a job but his temper gets the better of him. He needs to get away from town and decides to steal a car at a gas station. He chooses Geoffrey Webb’s car because all he sees is a fat man unable to fight back. It’s an easy theft. Fatal mistake.

Geoffrey Web has nothing to lose and he needs to unburden his conscience. While he drives with the man’s gun pointed at him, he locks hard to the left and makes his aggressor understand that he too has their lives between his hands. He starts bargaining: if he lets him drive them both to Little Rock, Arkansas and tell his story, he will give him the three thousand dollars he has in his wallet. The ex-con accepts the deal and Geoffrey Webb starts talking. He will relate a tale of sex, murder and criminality set in the community of the Higher Living Baptist Church in the southwest section of Little Rock.

Geoffrey is hired as the youth minister of the church and he’s a perfect psycho Tartuffe. He spouts on passages of the Bible like he means them while he actually recites them as a salesman delivers their pitch. He’s the kind of youth minister who blabbers chaste messages about love, Jesus and being good while keeping porn tapes for his evening fun and lusting after the pastor’s teenage daughter.

When Father Card, the pastor of this church hired Webb, he didn’t realize he was letting a wolf enter into the sheepfold. Geoffrey Webb is not only a nut job, he’s also a ticking bomb waiting to explode. And all it takes is a threat issued by the local sheriff and his pushing Webb to do something illegal to set everything in motion.

I don’t want to tell too much about the plot. I always try harder than usual to avoid spoilers in crime fiction billets. You’ll have to discover the rest by yourself.

I was warned that Jake Hinkon’s books were known to be violent. Well, Hell on Church Street is violent but not more than Drive by James Sallis or The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson. Hinkson respects the codes of the genre. The originality of his novel is the setting and the relentless vitriolic remarks he makes about the Higher Living Baptist Church. He portrays a hypocrite being accepted in the community as long as he says the right things and apparently behaves with propriety. He destroys the illusion that with people, what you see is what you get –if anyone still nurtured that illusion. He shows power games within the community leaders and how people who think they are holier than the Pope –well, not exactly since they wouldn’t want to be associated with the Pope or any papist—are actually very common people with any many flaws as anyone.

I had a good time reading Hell on Church Street. Hinkon’s style is punchy and even if it wasn’t always comfortable to be in Webb’s head, it was a hell of a journey.