THE WATER’S EDGE
Daniel Judson
St. Martin's Paperbacks
Thriller
Hardcover: 9780312352547
Paperback: 9780312355166
Though set in the Hamptons, THE WATER’S EDGE has a Jersey-noir sense to it. Taking place over a 24-hour period, with the balance occurring in the dead of night, the sun --- even in daylight --- never shines here.
The book opens with a struggling restaurateur, in the midst of a late-night refurbishing project, witnessing a gruesome double-murder on a nearby bridge. Others, one by one, are brought into the mix, including (but by no means limited to) Jake Bechet, an ex-boxer, now part owner of a cab company; Bobby Falchetti, Bechet’s friend and employee, whose moral weaknesses have the potential to bring down not only himself but also those around him; and Tommy Miller, a retired private investigator turned reclusive landlord, who is haunted by the memory of the lover who abruptly left him years before.
It is the manner in which master chef Daniel Judson mixes his characters into this hard-boiled roux that makes THE WATER’S EDGE such a compelling, addicting read. If we are separated by only six degrees from everyone else, that distance is halved in Judson’s Southampton. The victims of the murder are in the employ of Jorge Castello, a shady, seemingly omnipotent figure who has his fingers in pies both legal and illicit and is the reluctant former employer of Bechet.
Castello draws Bechet back into his orbit with a quietly roiling combination of threats and promises, for the purposes of determining who committed the murders and recovering some unnamed merchandise that Castello considers his own. He is certain that there is a traitor within his organization who is responsible for both the murders and the misappropriation of his goods; he figures, quite cannily, that the only way to get to the bottom of it is to go outside of his sphere of influence to Bechet, the one man who was able to walk away from him and make it stick.
Miller, meanwhile, is recruited by Southampton’s chief of police to conduct his own investigation into the killings, as a pragmatic move: there are things he can do and places he can go that the police cannot. Both men are given 24 hours to get results. Their investigations take them to places in their past that they would rather not go: Bechet to his --- and his father’s --- prior work for Castello, and Miller to his former love, who it seems was involved, in more ways than one, with one of the murder victims. Even as Miller’s and Bechet’s investigations each draw them slowly to the other, however, there are connections between them of which only one is aware and that must remain so if their lives, and those for whom they care, are to survive the day.
THE WATER’S EDGE is infused with dark, brilliant writing that focuses the mind and addicts the brain with its characterization and plotting. It is one of those novels that is so difficult to do well: take a number of individuals running around in a relatively small area, each with different pieces of the puzzle that the others need, and put a couple of them at crosscurrents with each other, until only the toughest and smartest is the one left standing. There are others who approach and match this level of East Coast noir --- Peter Blauner, Jason Starr, Wallace Stroby --- each of whom strikes a nerve and plays it like a finely tuned string. Judson, with THE WATER’S EDGE, cements his already secure place in the genre.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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