FLOODGATE is insane. It bounces back and forth in time, between 1929 and 1986. It is set in a fully conceptualized fictitious municipality --- Auction City --- that you will swear is modeled after any one of a number of large towns, including the one you live in or like to visit. If you are a resident of one, stop reading and take a drive into a commercial part of town that is peppered with unmarked storefronts and doors that provide no clue as to their purpose or reason. Imagine unshirted hell breaking loose behind them, and threatening to burst out and influence events far beyond their walls. That will give you a hint as to what the book is all about.

Author Johnny Shaw’s first three novels took place in the desert of the American southwest. FLOODGATE is set in a very different place. While Shaw brings his unique tradecraft and penchant for quirky characters from those books, that’s where the similarity ends. Sure, this is a crime novel, and a gritty one, but it is all city. It also toys --- dramatically --- with traditional storytelling and novelization. I mentioned that the narrative alternates between 1929 and 1986, but I didn’t mention the screenplay that pops up in the middle of the book, or the epigrams that are featured at the beginning of each chapter (I love epigrams, and these are really good ones) and…

"I don’t even know if I can wholeheartedly recommend FLOODGATE to you, but I loved every word of it. This is what you get when an author cares about what he’s doing, refuses to repeat himself, and gives free rein to his imagination."

...I didn’t mention what FLOODGATE is about. It’s a mystery at heart, involving Andy Destra, the only honest cop on the ironically named Auction City police force. Such a state of affairs will never do; accordingly, when Andy discovers evidence of police corruption, he is framed, disgraced, shown the door and kicked to the curb. That doesn’t stop him, though; it makes him all the more determined to see that justice is done. His pursuit takes him to places that his uniform kept him from entering, and, interestingly enough, it also provides him with access to evidence that may just answer the question that, besides the pursuit of justice, is his major obsession: the identity of his parents.

In both cases, Andy learns to be careful about what you ask for, and how much of it, but along the way he meets an entire host of characters who leap off the page and run around the room before (mostly) jumping back into the crevices. If you needed proof that the sins, errors and omissions of the past have repercussions in the present, FLOODGATE serves as a dark reminder of that, from its opening scene of a full-scale, city-wide riot in 1919 to its enigmatic ending to… Well, that would be telling, and I’m not about to spoil the surprises that Shaw no doubt spent months, if not years, cooking up here by revealing them in a few seconds with a few sentences. Let’s just say that the book reminded me of Sin City (the graphic novel, not the movie), Chinatown, any half-dozen dreams I’ve had in the past three weeks, and The Myth of Sisyphus, among other things.

I don’t even know if I can wholeheartedly recommend FLOODGATE to you, but I loved every word of it. This is what you get when an author cares about what he’s doing, refuses to repeat himself, and gives free rein to his imagination. Oh, and Shaw can seriously write, too. I loved that last sentence. But don’t peek. At least buy the book and stick with it for a hundred pages. You’ll want to finish it if you reach that point. Please.