Review by James Moran in The Antigonish Review

Dead White Males by Ann Diamond. (D.C. Books, 2000, $19.95).


If you're tired of pretentious Canadian literary experiences and want a good story that keeps you laughing, Ann Diamond's Dead White Males is a heartening change. Males following David Dennings, Private Detective, as he becomes entangled in a web of double-crosses, femme fatales and - mermaids.

The tone of Dead White Males amused me from the first page. David Dennings, a down-on-his-luck P.I. and part-time hairdresser, (whose slogan reads No Hair Too Thin, No Case Too Small) is sitting and stewing in his office. The phone rings. It's a potential client. Enter the effeminate and flamboyant Nick Maggot, who, in a snappy dialogue exchange, asks Detective Dennings to find Vera A. Utall, who broke his heart. Maggot hands Dennings her photograph. Dennings notices immediately that she's a mermaid. They negotiate.

Private Detective Dennings knows hair. As a result, he encounters characters that are either former customers, whom he recalls through nostalgic shampoo-and-blow-dry flashbacks, or potential customers. He either has done everyone's hair or has the uncontrollable desire to do everyone's hair. Every third line reads like hard-boiled Truman Capote turned on its head - except that in this case, the P.I. ends up falling not only for the missing Vera A. Utall, but his client, Nick Maggot, as well.

Dennings tries to track down Vera A. Utall, working only with her failed thesis - a semi-coherent mish-mash of purple prose and journal entries. The thesis becomes progressively more significant as the author reveals excerpt after excerpt at different intervals throughout Dead White Males. Just as you think you're on solid ground, Diamond pulls the rug from beneath you, keeping you laughing and turning pages as you try to find your feet again.

Set against the backdrop of Montreal in cold winter, I found the novel had good local feel, despite having the unique genre along the lines of The Big Sleep meets Brazil meets Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. The title, Dead White Males, refers to a covert group of dusty University professors who may or may not be pulling strings behind the scenes.

Of course, Dead White Males would not be a detective yarn without a gallery of suspicious and strange characters, such as Sergeant-Detective Gaston Plouffe, who dogs Dennings at every turn and the bisexual, cross-dressing Nick Maggot, who could either be friend or foe.

Others include the disgruntled Weather Girl, Ramonda Valdez, who Denning thinks needs a new perm, Ned Bone, the literary genius, who has a penchant for young, vulnerable women and Soleil Soleil, the flakey police consultant and witch doctor, who constantly blurts obscure and useless phrases (such as "Missing persons are everywhere").

While at times, the reader may get dizzy from the tangled web of plot as Dennings wanders through Montreal and Venezuela stumbling through surreal twists and turns, Ann Diamond delivers an ending tying up all loose ends - with, of course, the requisite twist. The repartee, snappy phrasing, betrayals and sense of desperation - all traits of the classic Humphrey Bogart flick - work well in a theatre of the absurd. In fact, Dead White Males is one of those rare books that would, on a second reading, like the second viewing of a film, glean more fine detail and laughter.


***

Saturday 27 January 2001

Diamond in the rough
Montreal writer gives males a kick in the groin in private-dick spoof

JOEL YANOFSKY
The Gazette

This is just a prediction, obviously,
but I'm guessing that as centuries
go the 21st won't be a great one for
my gender. Judging by her new
novel, Dead White Males, Ann
Diamond is guessing the same
thing. Even so, she's not taking any
chances - she is determined to kick
us beleaguered DWMs when we are
down.

Look past the fighting words of
the title and there's Montreal
illustrator Geoff Isherwood's lurid
cover to contend with, a
pulp-fiction rendering of a
stiletto-heeled femme fatale,
pistol in hand, stepping lightly over
the bodies of three guys whose
time has clearly come and gone.

There's also Diamond's unsavoury
male characters: in particular
international rock 'n' roll celebrity
Nick Maggot, who might have
been a Nazi in a previous life, and
Orville Goner, a reclusive poet,
serial killer and quite possibly
cannibal. His unpublished thesis is
called: On Capturing, Cleaning,
Curing and Cooking Young Women.

Diamond's narrator, David Dennings, a would-be private eye and
ex-hairdresser, is a man, too, but, by his own account, not a very
convincing one. Even so, he does his share of typical fin-de-siecle male
whining about how guys just aren't permitted to behave like guys any
more:

"Why shouldn't it enrage me that, as women grow ever more aggressive
and confident, even the so-called moguls and magnates are beginning
to look frayed around the edges? ... We were all scrambling for a space
in a world that was becoming increasingly personal, elusive and elliptical
- like a women's novel."

I'll do what guys are supposed to do - stick to the
facts. Dead White Males is nutty, paranoid, messy and a great deal of
fun. A must for Ann Diamond fans.