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(More customer reviews)It's been said that what Elmore Leonard ("Freaky Deaky," "Get Shorty," etc.) did for crime novels in urban environments, Ross Thomas did for crime novels in suburban environments. Thomas' novels aren't so much gritty as they are witty, and less about openly violent crimes as about deep corruption beneath the veneer of civilization.
"The Fools in Town Are On Our Side" is one of the best Thomas novels. It's really about three or four stories all wrapped together. The stories all happen to be about the narrator, Lucifer C. Dye. Dye was born in Montana, but spent his childhood in Shanghai, China, before and during World War II. Story No. 1 is about how he came to be raised by a Russian-born madam running Shanghai's top brothel. Story No. 2 is about how Dye came to be the youngest Sergeant Major in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, largely on the strength of his perfectly fluent Mandarin (Chinese), and his subsequent recruitment into a government intelligence program. Story No. 3 is about how he got booted out of the program. And Story No. 4 is the main story, wherein he is offered $50,000 (it was worth a lot more back in 1970 when the book was written) to help "corrupt" a town, the idea being that in order to get the townspeople to vote for a reform slate, they have to be really fed up with corruption. That requires making things far worse so people see how bad the corruption is.
Of course, Thomas does not tell the stories in that sequence. Instead, they're all mixed together, which ordinarily I find annoying, but each story is so interesting that the technique works here.
There's a little bit of violence, but for the most part, the book is really about intrigue, double-dealings, and so forth. If you've never read anything by Ross Thomas, this is a great introduction.
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"Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side?And ain't that a big enough majority in any town?" -- Mark TwainRoss Thomas chose the quotation from Huckleberry Finn as the text of his post World War II story as well as for the title.When Lucifer Dye is released from three months in a Hong Kong prison, debriefed, handed a false passport, a new wardrobe and a $20,000 check, his haughty control makes it clear that Dye's career with his country has been permanently terminated.But a good agent is always in demand, and just a few hours later Dye is being interviewed for a highly ingenious position. Victor Orcutt, although a not very good imitation of a British pre-war gent, has creative talents of his own.He has his sights a small southern city, with the ordinary run-of-the-mill corruption one would expect in such a place. The canny Orcott knows there's no profit in that . His creed is"To get better, it must be much worse."He and his two associates have looked up Dye's history, and he now offers the ex-spy's a mission.For two and a half times the government's bounty, Dye is to thoroughly corrupt the town.And the sly Dye takes the offer.
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