Books |
They’re Watching
Gregg Hurwitz
By
Published: Jul 20, 2010
Category:
Mystery
Hollywood — I mean: the studio system — is so over I don’t know where to begin. But old images die slowly. Images of “moguls” and “executives” and “the studio lot” will be around long after studios have morphed into nothing more than distributors and marketers for films developed, financed and produced elsewhere.
But a young teacher named Patrick Davis drifts into Hollywood — which, in "They’re Watching," is vibrant and powerful — with a screenplay called “They’re Watching.” And it gets bought. And then something happens on the set — no spoilers here — and Patrick is ruined.
Well, he thinks he’s ruined. The fun is just starting. One morning, in his Los Angeles Times, he finds a DVD. It is, more or less, this:
Gregg Hurwitz is very good at this stuff, and “They’re Watching” [to buy from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here. ] is very good stuff indeed. It’s got voyeurism. Sadism. A Kafkaesque blend of reality and menace, with the bad guys so remote that you can’t guess who they are. And then add, for good measure, a dysfunctional marriage — did you think Patrick was sleeping on the couch because he came home late after bowling with the guys?
Hurwitz does not twist the plot, he wrenches it — often, and fast. One minute, Patrick is being stalked in his own home, the next he’s a murder suspect. There are clever, amusing cops, and then there are cops who aren’t cops. And it’s all being played out, let me remind you, by villains who live in the shadows and operate by remote control.
So Patrick — a hero, a fool, whatever — takes it upon himself to solve the riddle. Like he can get ahead of his tormentors! Here’s how one of those efforts plays out:
I heard the creak of a door opening above. A footstep. Then another. Then a man’s boot set down on the uppermost step in my range of vision. The right foot followed. His knees came visible, then his thighs, then waist. He was wearing scuffed worker jeans, a nondescript black belt, maybe a gray T-shirt.
I slid my right hand down to the hilt of the butcher knife and squeezed it so hard that my palm tingled. Warmth leaked into my mouth; I’d bitten my cheek.
He stopped on the bottom step, a foot from my window, the line of my car roof severing him at the midsection. I wanted to duck down so I could see his face, but I’d been warned not to. He was too close anyway.
His knuckle rose, tapped the glass once.
I pushed the button with my left hand. The window started to whir down. The knife blade felt cool hidden beneath my thigh. I picked out a spot on his chest, just below his ribs. But first I had to find out what I needed to know.
His other hand came swiftly into view and popped something fist-sized in through the open gap of the still-lowering window. Hitting my lap, it was surprisingly heavy.
I looked down.
A hand grenade.
I choked on my breath. I reached to grab it.
Before my splayed fingers could get there, it detonated.
There are millions of Americans who eat these books up — and will be thrilled by this thriller. I don’t have an affinity for the genre, so “They’re Watching” caught me off guard. That is, I couldn’t outthink it, which was pleasant, but I kept noticing the sadism at the heart of the plot, which was, over time, less pleasant.
Books that have a monotone evil at their core really ought to be saying goodbye at page 250. “They’re Watching” tortures Patrick for 356 pages. At that length, it doesn’t matter that Hurwitz is a taut, effective writer — the book becomes a snipe hunt, and I, for one, get tired.
In the movie version, Patrick will defeat his tormentors — what? You thought he’d be killed? — on page 120, and everybody will go home happy.
