Looking Back to Read Forward
The Washington Trail: A Slade and Cork Mystery
By Lou Aguilar
Aethon Books, 304 pages, $22
The usual practice in book reviewing is to write about books just being published. Free advertising for the publisher if the review is positive. And there are usually new titles coming out that are worth the reading time.
An enjoyable part of reading Trail for me was the many quotes from movies in the two main character’s dialogue.
Of course there are books coming out that readers should be warned off of. I don’t like to write negative reviews. But I’ve made exceptions for the empty suit and political windsock Charlie Crist and for the execrable Debbie Wasserman Shultz, the very leftist congresswoman representing Broward County in Southeast Florida, and the former chairwitch of the DNC. (To be politically correct, as Debbie always is, shouldn’t that be Wasserperson?)
But what about worthy books that have been out for awhile that have escaped the notice of well-read TAS regulars? Reading time is limited, downright precious, in our busy lives. So in this review, and perhaps others in the future, I endeavor to direct readers to books that I’ve found entertaining, informative, or both. Books that I hope will repay the reading time of others. To do this I have a long reading life to draw from.
What better way to start than to feature a 2024 title by one of our own, the estimable Lou Augilar. TAS readers will recognize the byline. In on-point columns Lou has ably plumbed the depths of our current debased culture. He’s deconstructed Hollywoke, with particular emphasis on how moviemakers have turned their backs on feminine beauty and on traditional masculinity. They’ve ridden every dopey progressive brain bubble hard and put it up wet, thereby turning the dream factory into a nightmare, and leaving movie theaters nearly empty.
Lou is well-suited for his Tinseltown takedowns, having lived and worked in the belly of that beast for years as a screenwriter. This career was curtailed somewhat when the Hollywood political police discovered, to their horror, that Lou is a conservative, mired in common sense. He was promptly cast into what the entertainment smart set considers outer darkness, and the rest of us see as the real world. A world where men are men, women are women, horses are horses, and with any luck the cowboy kisses the right one.
In The Washington Trail, Lou’s devotion to traditional characters and themes finds fictional life in the work of two Washington-based private investigators. Ex-Army Ranger Mark Slade is the kind of tough, intelligent, honest, and courageous alpha male that has just about disappeared from both the large and small screens. His partner, Neil Cork, is an ex-FBI analyst, more cerebral than Mark perhaps, but no cream puff himself. Both find themselves in their ex- status because of the corrosive effects of progressive ideology and partisan politics thwarting the missions of their previous employers.
Both men are, as not that long ago men were allowed to be, open admirers of feminine beauty. They don’t consider “the chase,” honorably conducted with boundaries respected, to be sexual misconduct. Objectify? Whatever the hell does that mean, other than the eternal verity that straight guys like pretty girls? To those that this troubles, Slade and Cork counsel, “GET OVER IT!!”
Speaking of pretty girls, Trail begins innocuously enough when the pair take on a comely client, one Amy Gallup, who is convinced, she says, that the man she fancies is enjoying a bit of the other with a party unknown. She wants to know for sure. This is the kind of case that makes up a significant portion of PI cash flow and is usually of no interest to anyone beyond the parties involved. But not this time. Soon this “routine” case spirals into a hairball that involves a threat to the nation’s security and a matter of life and death to the parties involved.
Slade quickly determines that Amy’s guy is indeed playing away from home and with someone whom Slade didn’t suspect. Then events begin to move quickly. The cat is soon among the pigeons. Multiple cats as it turns out. The players expand to include a conservative Southern Senator loosely connected, or not, to a shadowy group called Kudzu (which like the dew, covers Dixie), a violent group of eco-terrorists, various law enforcement agencies, and a mysterious painting called “The Apocalypse Mask,” which is said to contain dangerous powers. Slade and Cork must dodge assassins as the bodies pile up, and have to sort corrupt government officials from the legitimate. Until the end, it’s hard to tell who is on what side.
No spoiler alerts necessary as I won’t go into plot details or the outcome of Trail. I’ll leave these to the folks who choose to read the book. Readers who like to see their politics served up by engaging fictional characters will like this one. In addition to taking swings at a political FBI and CIA, Slade and Cork tear strips off of climate hysterics, other enviro-wackadoodles, the pronoun posse, macho feminists, and other disturbers of the peace.
An enjoyable part of reading Trail for me was the many quotes from movies in the two main character’s dialogue. (I’m of an age to have seen most of the movies — but not so old that I’ve forgotten the quotes.) Not surprising that a movie guy such as Lou — a great fan of westerns and an admirer of my childhood favorite, the Duke — would resort to a devise like this. The most frequently quoted movie by far is 1959’s Rio Bravo, which starred Wayne, Dean Martin, and a young and alluring Angie Dickenson. Other flicks that get cameo quotes include: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; Shane, The Searchers, The Magnificent 7(the original one); Marathon Man; Stage Coach (again, the original one); The Outlaw Josey Wales; The Last of the Mohicans; Tombstone; Ride the High Country; and High Noon, this last one unfavorably. When a barista in a restaurant asks for Slade’s name, he replies, “Tom Dunson,” the name of the Duke’s character in Red River.
Lou promises more Slade and Cork later this year. If these two gumshoes appeal to you, read the books. Yet encouragingly, the gradual easing of Hollywood’s progressive orthodoxy during the Trump years has also sparked renewed interest in small corners of Tinseltown. Who knows?
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