“I’m not really a private eye. I just do stuff sometimes, that other people can’t…” That’s Ethan Reckless, the hero of an outstanding series of hardcover graphic novels by American writer Ed Brubaker and UK artist Sean Phillips, summing up his occupation. And that’s more or less accurate. The FBI dropout turned slacker shamus who’d rather watch old movies (he lives in an old movie theater, The El Ricardo) or surf (he lives in Los Angeles) doesn’t really hunt down jobs—he only takes those that interest him. And doesn’t get involved.
Mostly.
But when a neighbor, Francis, asks for a favor in Follow Me Down, the fifth book in the series, Ethan reluctantly agrees—he owes Francis a solid—and points his battered van north, heading for San Francisco, a city still recovering from the recent October 1989 quake. His goal? To find Francis’ daughter-in-law Rachel, an ex-junkie, who’s taken a powder, leaving her husband (Francis’ son) in bad shape.
Never the most happy of campers, the cynical Reckless figures he’ll find Rachel “in some basement, dead, with a needle in her arm.” It doesn’t take long, though, for him to realize she’s “in a much worse place than that.”
Turns out Rachel is more than a runaway wife—she’s got a past she’s finally decided to deal with and some long-overdue scores to settle.
Captivated by Rachel’s story, the neverget- involved Reckless agrees—much to his own surprise—to accompany Rachel on her mission, digging into family secrets like some alternate-universe Lew Archer. (Although Ross Macdonald’s question-asking SoCal detective probably never smashed a portable TV over a scumbag’s head just to get a few answers.)
It’s clear partners-in-crime Brubaker and Phillips know and love their pulp fiction, old detective shows, B-flicks, and Men’s Adventure books—the name drops are both subtle and bold-faced, and there are nods to Cornell Woolrich, Vertigo, and most strikingly, the Flitcraft parable in Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. Meanwhile, Phillips’ noirish artwork, all fine lines and heartbreak and clearly deeply researched, nails the dark, tattered vibe of a time and place: the jails, the cheap motel rooms, the lonely beaches, the battered cars, and the broken people—the attention to detail is so perfect it hurts.
But it’s not as haunting and bittersweet as the drawn-out concluding coda that fades into black—one of the most moving epilogues I’ve witnessed in a long time.
The Eisener-winning tag team of Brubaker and Phillips always make for a formidable duo, but they may have topped themselves with this one. All those writers working the harder veins of crime fiction ought to offer a prayer of gratitude that Brubaker and Phillips are—so far—sticking with comic books.
