The Art of the Crime Novella: Slow Bear by Anthony Neil Smith

I have a thing for novelettes and novellas, those redheaded stepchildren of the literary world. Too long for most literary magazines to touch, too short for most big book publishers to bother with unless your name is, say, Annie Proulx or Denis Johnson. As a writer, I admire the efficiency of a story that in 10,000 to 25,000 words can give me a full novel’s worth of plot, character, and theme. If done well, you know the author has had to sweat every detail, every word choice, every subplot or diversion and mercilessly trim the fat. In addition, I’m a slow reader—perhaps because I’m always analyzing those same elements as I read. I spend as much time looking under the hood as I do behind the wheel, as it were. Given the demands of work, family, and my own writing, a 400-page book is a month-long commitment for me. So in between those lengthier works, I need a satisfying, efficient read.

Fortunately, there are smaller, independent presses out there that appreciate lean storytelling and will put out slim books that “Big 5” publishers generally would reject. In the crime fiction world, those intrepid presses include Shotgun Honey and Fahrenheit Press. I have them to thank for many a good read—most recently, Anthony Neil Smith’s Slow Bear (Fahrenheit).

This novella, which reads as the first installation in a series, introduces readers to Micah “Slow Bear” Cross. He’s a man one might call down on his luck, except he had a pretty big hand in his own predicament. Slow Bear used to be a crooked cop on a “rez” in the northern Midwest where oil once meant big money but now is drying up. Perhaps the only reason he isn’t in jail for his crimes is he lost an arm to a shotgun blast while, for once, actually trying to serve and protect. Now he whiles away his days sitting at the casino bar and doing petty P.I. work for which he gets paid in casino chips. Ill-considered words and some vigilante justice doled out in the first chapter put Slow Bear in the cross-hairs of the chief of police (also his cousin) and the chairman of the reservation, known only as “The Hat” for the garish beaver pelt cowboy hat he wears.

The Hat has a plan for Slow Bear that doesn’t involve a jail cell. The plan does involve him being exiled from the reservation so that he can ingratiate himself to the only other man who has ever been exiled in the same manner: a successful businessman named Santana with whom The Hat has an old grudge. The Hat believes Santana may still have well-concealed fingers in a number of rez business interests, and he wants Slow Bear to find him proof.

Slow Bear is escorted off the reservation by his daily bartender, Lady, who confesses to have taken a shine to Slow Bear. And just when it appears their relationship might flourish, Lady is kidnapped, taken in a flash from the car that for a time serves as their mobile home. Slow Bear, having no other option, turns to the man he was supposed to be spying on, the one man with the muscle and the connections to help him find her.

What follows is a breakneck story of desperation, shady characters, and desolate landscape that checks all the noir boxes but maintains a stance always just a little left or right of center. Nothing is ever quite what you expect. Slow Bear, as the protagonist, seems to occupy a liminal space somewhere between the tortured P.I. trope and an anti-hero. Santana, if he wasn’t so good at being a shady businessman, might have a career in stand-up. Even the setting for the big reveal toward the end left me wondering, Now who would think of that?

But as much as the story, Smith’s prose is worth reveling in. Punchy, sometimes terse, at other times uproariously funny, but always revealing. Take, for example, this brief passage when Slow Bear’s first meeting with Santana and his henchmen doesn’t go so well: “The office door clicked shut and there was Manfred aiming a gun at Slow Bear, the other security man wishing he had someone to punch, and Santana buttoning his coat and shuffling his shoulders.” In this one sentence, in each select phrase, so much character is revealed.

Slow Bear’s ending is satisfying in large degree but also suggests that more is coming. This reader certainly prays that it is. Fahrenheit, let’s make that happen.