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No Tomorrow by Jake Hinkson – A great polar
Not Tomorrow by Jake Hinkson (2015) French title: Sans lendemain. Translated by Sophie Aslanides.
I discovered Jake Hinkson at Quais du Polar and here’s the short biography he gave them for the festival’s website: I was raised by Christian fundamentalists in the mountains of Arkansas. I used to smuggle forbidden crime novels into Bible camp. If Jim Thompson had knocked up Flannery O’Connor in a cheap Ozark motel, I would be their offspring.
Now that you aware of this, you won’t be surprised that Hell on Church Street was a disturbing story set in a Christian fundamentalists’ community in Arkansas and that No Tomorrow is also (mostly) set in Arkansas and that a fundamentalist preacher plays an important part in the story. No Tomorrow starts like this:
The person being warned against going to Arkansas is Billie Dixon. We’re in the summer 1947 and she works for a B-movies studio in Hollywood. She’s in charge of selling or renting their films to local theatres in Missouri, Arkansas and Tennessee. She’s trying to sell films in a part of the Bible Belt.
As you can imagine, Billie Dixon doesn’t take this friendly advice and drives to Stock’s Settlement, Arkansas. The name of the town itself sounds like rural America. She discovers that the town is under the rule of a preacher, Henshaw. He is against cinema and Claude Jeter, the owner of the only movie theatre in Stock’s Settlement is out of business. There’s no way he can rent films to Billie’s employer.
She decides to go and meet Henshaw in a futile attempt to convince him that films are harmless entertainment and that he should allow them in Stock’s Settlement. This is how Billie Dixon meets her femme fatale, Amberly Henshaw. She’s the preacher’s wife and seems imprisoned in her religion-driven life. Bille and Amberly are attracted to each other and have one-afternoon stand.
It will be enough for Billie to come back to Stock’s Settlement to see Amberly again and get entangled in her predicament. Clearly, the preacher is in the way of their relationship and how convenient could it be if he died?
Imagine a lesbian affair in 1947 in Arkansas, a place where homosexuality was a criminal act at the time. (According to Wikipedia, homosexuality was a criminal act in Arkansas until 2002. In France, it was decriminalized in 1981.) Imagine the small town atmosphere and the contrast between Billie’s Hollywood life and Amberly’s life in Stock’s Settlement, a place where they’d rather have a mentally challenged elected sheriff flanked by his sister as a secretary than actually elect the sister as sheriff, something impossible because she’s a woman.
No Tomorrow is a great reading trip, taking you in the realm of classic Hollywood, neo-noir, with murders, road trips and femmes fatales. I think that the French cover reflects the atmosphere of the book, a polar that crime fiction aficionados will probably like. I don’t know if the designer of the American cover actually read the book. It totally lacks the vintage atmosphere that is at the core of Hinkson’s novel. If you saw the two covers in the bookstore, which one would draw your attention?
I read No Tomorrow in one sitting, like you watch a good movie. It won the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in France in 2018 and Jake Hinkson is published by Gallmeister. As always, Sophie Aslanides’s translation is outstanding. She always manages to transfer the American language vibe into French.
Highly recommended.
Hell On Church Street by Jake Hinkson
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.
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