Four of Clubs: Murder in the High Sierra

David Downie's new book Four of Clubs is riveting from page 1. It arrived yesterday, and as I was in the middle of two other books, both of which I'm enjoying, I wasn't going to begin it right away. Still, I figured it wouldn't hurt to read the first page. Silly me! It was all over after that! I just now turned the last page, less than 24 hours after I began the book, all 312 pages of it. What a story! I'm going to have to be very careful here and not provide any spoilers. This is, after all, a murder mystery. So I'll focus on a brief overview, maybe just some teasers. And then on the writing itself. Ed Dobbs is a 65 year old psychologist and landscape designer with a side of water color painting. With his life long friends Don McCoy and Pete Johnson, he loves Serena Swallow, two years their junior, who fascinates all three men and loved them back. As California kids in the 70s they hang out together, travel together, live and love together, the Club of Four, until tragedy strikes, and Serena plunges to her death in an avalanche. Years after, the three men memorialize her death annually by returning to the very ledge from which she fell decades earlier. But was her death accidental? And when Pete and Don also plunge to their deaths from that very same cliff at their annual memorial meeting, was it accidental as well? Almost dying himself in the process of trying to rescue his friends, Ed sets out to understand what happened all those years ago and what really happened with Don and Pete. And this is all within the first pages of this gripping novel! What makes this book particularly satisfying to me for one thing is the exquisite detail of the setting in the High Sierras, the rugged, gorgeous landscape. Downie is a master at painting a scene. I can see Chicken Rock and the foxtail pines and the ominous funnel into which Serena fell. There's a cinematic quality to his writing. Then there's the intricacy of the story and the depth of character development. You feel you really know these people. They aren't simply ciphers. They have dimension, specificity, and that's true of even the minor characters. Almost Dickensian. I also love the intelligence behind the writing, the familiarity with so much of literature, history, science, gastronomy, politics, and language. And it's a timely novel with pointed reference to current American politics and the devastating impact of climate change. All these qualities taken together made this a real page-turner for me. I haven't devoured a book at this speed in ages. And the critic who wrote, "Clever, polished, and sophisticated," was dead on. I highly recommend Four of Clubs.

I love David Downie's books and I have about all of them. This is a bit different from his books on Paris but I like the new direction.

This is not a book where you sit down and race through it in a night or two. You need to take the time to savor the author's intelligent writing, especially where it comes to drawing his characters. Some of the characters are attractive, and some repulsive, but all very interesting. I read a lot of high action thrillers and zoom through them. This is not that kind of book. Take your time and savor the craftsmanship! Then...go to his other books. Note: The non-fiction is just as good!

The twists and turns kept me guessing! Great descriptions of the Eastern Sierra and the Oakland/Berkeley Hills. Beer from Chico! Groceries from Berkeley Bowl! You can tell that Mr. Downie has been there and done that.

Best mystery novel I have read this year. A genuine pleasure. I am in love with Zena!

I Really liked this book!

Three adolescent boys, childhood friends, meet a beguiling half-Persian girl, fourteen years old but fully adult in matters of sex. Over forty years the inevitable tensions boil over. The result: murder. More than one. Growing up in San Francisco, the boys came from very different economic backgrounds, ranging from the rich one at the top of the hill to his poor fraternal twin, adopted by different parents, at the bottom. In the middle is Ed Dobbs, retired psychologist and failed medical student, who narrates the story from the vantage point of the special ledge at 10,000 feet, overlooking the High Sierra ski slopes where they all work after college. The girl is Serena Swallow, exiled to California for an abortion, which will not be her last. There are hints of abuse and scars of past trauma. She stays with neighbors of the narrator, who of course falls in love with her but without the sexual charge of his friends. The two other boys, equally smitten, worm into the relationship. The stolid Ed Dobbs, in her account the one she loves best, is in fact the only one of the boys not sleeping with her. The Four of Clubs of the title refers back to the playing card each of the friends carried in memory of the Four. After the first death, they return to the stone pyramid to mourn the first victim by burning their cards. Later, they fold them into small paper airplanes and launch them into the void below, foreshadowing more of the story. Four of Clubs is a subtle novel, written by an author deeply familiar with the area. His previous California novel, The Gardener of Eden, was also a story of depth. Both benefit from being read twice: Once for the pure pleasure of the story, again for the deeper story and relationships. Downie was born in San Francisco to an American father and Italian mother, can claim both English and Italian as native languages, and lives with his wife, the photographer Alison Harris, in Paris and Italy, near Genoa. Before he turned to novels he explored Paris deeply in his nonfiction. My favorite of his books about Paris is Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light, which I refer to before every trip to Paris.

There are terrific writers and there are terrific storytellers. Lucky for us, David Downie is both! “Four of Clubs,” a riveting and sharply written murder/mystery is his latest success. Previous reviews (please read them too) have provided a synopsis of the storyline, so I’ll just add that you’re going to be hooked on every page from first to last. David’s imagination and skills as a writer for weaving an intricate and fiercely human tale is truly inspiring. Some of the characters you’ll love, and some you’ll hate, but all of them will keep you enthralled from beginning to end. Please also be sure check out David Downie’s numerous other works, both fiction and nonfiction.

My only previous encounter with David Downie's fiction has been with his "Red Riviera", where he shows he can plot a conventional mystery story very well indeed. With "Four of Clubs", my sense is that Downie has knowingly been prepared to risk bending a few of the rules of his chosen genre in order to get at something deeper while keeping his reader turning the pages. Although it's certainly not wrong to describe "Four of Clubs" as a murder mystery — and the novel does ultimately satisfy the expectations that tag line sets up — what really strikes me about this novel is the strangely 'stuck' psychological state of the first person narrator, who for much of the novel seems to have difficulty recognising just how nasty many of the people he has thought of as 'friends' (or something more than that) for much of his life actually are. As a result, he spends large chunks of time mulling over events long past, seemingly looking for the key to a psychological secret that at face value appears to be staring him in the teeth. But then, isn't this precisely what trauma can do to a person? Isn't this just exactly how a 'broken' person might function? Downie's trademarked ability to create a vivid sense of place gets full play throughout, and all his settings are vividly evoked. Particularly memorable, for me, is an extended sequence where the narrator and a couple of rednecks aides undertake a perilous journey of enquiry into bear- and rattlesnake-infested territory immediately below the towering peaks and cliffs in the High Sierra, while up above, it seems someone just might be trying to kill them by starting a rock slide. This IS, as I say, a genre novel, but it is also suffused with a level of psychological pain that at times seems so strong that the plot must bend or pause to accommodate it. In this sense, it's quite an unsettling work, with a deeply personal feel I would not normally associate with a murder mystery. For me, it is all the more interesting for that.

David Downie’s 18th book, Four of Clubs, is a sheer and sophisticated delight and I gulped it down in no time at all. Suffice it to say that if you like a good yarn, sparkling, sassy and sizzling dialogue, masterfully drawn not always loveable characters, a good dose of humour and a complicated intrigue the Four of Clubs is for you. One thing I loved: Downie’s love of language and grown up vocabulary that shines through in this age of dumbing down. Plus I loved his send-ups of the PC California culture as well as his deep knowledge of and concern for nature and the environment. No spoilers here, but after many red herrings, the ending of this tale of love, betrayal, revenge and murder (or suicide) was absolutely brilliant and satisfying. A good and powerful read.

The Four of Clubs in the title isn’t a love triangle. It’s love and lust squared. Four men and one woman. She graces them with her favors, one by one. Then suddenly…. ‘I caught sight of her, a silhouette still freefalling hundreds of feet below, tumbling in slow motion, flying into the air, the night-glow red-and-blue trim of her white snowsuit disappearing into a frozen white cloud above the granite boulders….’ The writing is gorgeous. Mesmerizing.