Book: "Chance" by Kem Nunn

I began reading Kem Nunn's work years and years ago, in the 1980's, when he gave one of his first novels to my brother John while John was working as a waiter at the Chart House in Long Beach.  (Yes, TMI, but it explains things.)  He, Kem Nunn, not John, has written a handful of novels, all dark and noir-ish.  He also wrote for the TV series "Deadwood" and more recently "Sons of Anarchy."  Right there you know he isn't going to be a happy-go-lucky kind of writer.  Villainous cowboys and murderous motorcycle gangs do not make for pretty prose.

Nunn's latest book is "Chance."  To describe this book as dark would be like saying kittens are cute.  It doesn't do it justice and it is much, much more complicated than simply "dark."  The story is ostensibly simple, one guy trying to help out a woman in distress who might or might not have multiple personalities and who is married to a supposedly corrupt cop who could have arranged the deaths of several people and who may have provoked an attacked by a refrigerator-sized man with a Black Widow tattoo on his head who could be an ex-military secret ops guy or maybe is just delusional and who hangs around with an old man who perhaps forges antiques and who drives a Cutlass that quite possibly is stolen.  Or none of the above.  But seriously, it is much more complicated than that. Kittens are cute, true, but in this book the truth is never that important. Or clear.

It's a wild ride and one that you should definitely take if you like compelling stories that leave you shaking your head now and then because of the twisted nature of the characters.  Not twisted in cruel, evil ways (although there is some of that) but twisted in the slight-of-hand ways where you aren't sure who is the good guy or even if there is one.

I liked it.  A lot. Nunn's skills have gotten so much better since his last novel ten years ago that I sincerely hope he doesn't wait another ten to write the next one.  This is a book I will purchase when it comes on sale because I have the feeling that if I read it again in a year, I will discover another story behind the story, another shill in the shadows who will take the tale to a whole other level.  Or maybe that's just my imagination running wild under Kem Nunn's influence. Either way, it's worth the run.