Deep Down Dead – Steph Broadribb, Orenda Books, 2016
It’s been a while since I read a book built on pure tension. And it’s been longer still since I read one that pulled it off. Deep Down Dead pulls it off brilliantly.
Based in the deep South, the settings inject a sense of claustrophobia that has nothing to do with an actual lack of space and everything to do with a feeling that we’re being taken somewhere whether we want to or not, that the die is cast and there’s no getting off. Every motel, every bar, every run-down farmhouse, every downtown street corner, every creek and swamp and wide-open road combines to squeeze everything down and build that tension until it’s got to explode. This might be Florida – among other states, and complete with the gators and the heat – but it sure as hell isn’t Disney World.
The story is told in the first person, with our heroine Lori drawn swiftly into a nightmare that threatens everything she cares about and that she doesn’t understand any more than the reader does. The narration itself is perfect, an idiomatic southern style that sets up Lori and her world more effectively than a hundred pages of explanation might have done. And that’s doubly good because there’s no room in here to get bogged down in history. The back story only appears when it has to, and when it comes, it comes fast, sneaking in, a quick one-two to the ribs and out again. The pace doesn’t let up for a second – Lori doesn’t have time to rest, and neither does the reader.
Twenty-five years ago I read Tough Guys Don’t Dance, and ever since I’ve been looking for a book that uses place and plot, confusion and tension as well as Mailer did. With Deep Down Dead, I think I’ve finally found it.