<< Back 12/25/02 The saga continues Constantine’s latest protagonists prove worthy successors to Chief Balzic By Gary Carden Saving Room for Dessert by K.C. Constantine. New York: TimeWarner Books, 2002. $23.95 — 294 pp. In one of my binge-reading phases, I became a detective fiction addict for over five years. For a while, I read everything I could find that qualified as current detective/crime fiction, including the total published works of James Lee Burke, James W. Hall, Marcia Muller, Patricia Highsmith, George P. Pelecanos, Lawrence Block, James Elroy, Carl Hiaasen, Elmore Leonard and Ed McBain. Eventually, I began subscribing to a variety of magazines that dealt with detective/crime fiction and read all of the interviews with my favorite authors. It was here that I first heard of K. C. Constantine. Essentially, what I discovered was that Constantine is “a writers’ writer.” Although he was virtually unknown (1980), his peers considered him “a master of his craft.” Living quietly in western Pennsylvania, Constantine has produced an impressive series of novels dealing with the fictional town of Rocksburg and a police chief, Mario Balzic. I had never heard of him, but the frequent praise delivered by his peers prompted me to order Joey’s Case and Always a Body to Trade. I was immediately hooked. Within a few months, I had read every Constantine novel in print, plus most of the titles on an out-of-print list that I kept in my billfold as I prowled the shelves of used book stores. Eventually, I found them all, including The Man Who Liked Slow Tomatoes (1982) and had followed Chief Balzic through his entire career. By the time I got to Cranks and Shadows, Constantine’s spunky protagonist had survived almost 25 years of gun shots, departmental politics, domestic travail and prostate cancer. Reluctantly facing retirement, Balzic was grooming his “temporary replacement,” Rugs Carlucci. I thought that Constantine’s books had stopped with Balzic’s retirement. Well, I was wrong. While reading Stephen King’s From a Buick 8, I happened to find King’s “Afterword,” an account of his sojourn in Pennsylvania while he did research for his last novel. King had encountered a lot of problems in developing a credible setting for his Pennsylvania highway patrol office, but in the middle of his recollections, I found this: “I got to set my fictional town of Statler just down the road apiece from Rocksburg, the town which serves as the locale for K.C. Constantine’s brilliant series of novels about small-town police chief Mario Balzic. If you have never read any of these stories, you ought to do yourself a favor. The continuing story of Chief Balzic and his family is like “the Sopranos” turned inside-out and told from a law enforcement point of view.” So, off I went again and discovered Saving Room for Dessert as well as several other “post-Balzic” novels (Blood Mud and Grievances). The magic is still there even though Mario Balzic is reduced to a retired cop who pays an occasional visit to his friends at headquarters. Constantine’s last novel deals with the “daily grind” as experienced by three Rocksburg policemen: William Rayford, Robert “BooBoo” Canoza, and James Reseta. This remarkably diverse trio spend each day dealing with the petty (and sometimes deadly) contretemps of juvenile delinquents, feuding neighbors and volatile family disputes. The problems lack the glamour of big city murder and mayhem, but the narrative of Saving Room for Dessert fairly bristles with tension, wit and caustic humor. Constantine’s greatest forte is his gift for dialogue. Ninety percent of a Constantine novel consists of the rapid, give-and-take exchanges between men and women, cops and cops and cops and suspects. The language has a gritty realism — impatience, vulgarity and dark humor. Rayford, Canoza and Reseta are beleagured men who spend each day dealing with a world that perceives them as incompetent, stupid and/or corrupt. Their survival depends on their ability to cope with the hostility of a citizenry that never tires of reminding them that “my taxes pay your salaries.” Each of the patrolmen in Saving Room for Dessert has been affected by their environment and their past. Rayford, a black officer in a racist world, knows that the odds are against him both in the department and on the street. Divorced, grieving for a dead son and besotted with love for his ex-wife, Rayford survives by a single maxim: Be the best. “BooBoo” Canoza is overweight, short-tempered and crude. His refusal to wear his protective jacket and his massive collection of personal vendettas keeps him in trouble with the department — especially his dislike for “little old ladies.” Reseta, in the words of the departmental psychiatrist, “has a bomb in his head” that is dangerously close to exploding. That bomb owes its existence to a horrifying experience in Vietnam and Reseta’s need to make someone accountable for the injustice he sees every day. Oddly enough, these three men are remarkably appealing — especially the verbally and physically gross Canoza. As they interact with each other and the frustrating inhabitants of “the United Nations” — a lower-class neighborhood noted for its cultural diversity and the bizarre eccentricities of the people — these three men acquire a strange nobility. Although each is morally flawed, possessing character traits that are either offensive or intimidating, they are admirably persistent. Despite the chafing friction of “the daily grind,” they return each day to a life that is spiritually abrasive and is gradually instilling significant amounts of paranoia into their lives. Saving Room for Dessert centers on “the United Nations,” the neighborhood that has become a bane to all three patrolmen. Filled with retired couples that have time-worn grievances against each other (and the police), these personal feuds have became volatile. The title of this novel is derived from the antics of one mentally-ill resident who stands outside of his home with an electric hair-dryer which he aims at motorists and pedestrians while attempting to write citations for speeding. His favorite quip to the patrolmen is “Save room for dessert.” (Occasionally, he adds, “Do you want fries with that?”) In addition, the daily wars between the disgruntled residents about “doggie poop,” boundary lines, unfaithful wives and litter has escalated. Suddenly, a situation that was once frustrating but humorous has become deadly. Before an uneasy peace comes to the “United Nations,” a resident will die and Rayford, Boo-Boo and Reseta will find their careers in jeopardy. The insueing investigation is a classic recreation of a municipal investigation into “alleged misconduct.” As much as I liked Saving Room for Dessert, I sorely missed Mario Balzic. (If these novels ever end up as a TV series or a movie, I hope that Dennis Franz of “NYPD Blue” does the role of Balzic!) Certainly, I recommend this book to lovers of detective fiction, but I strongly suggest that you “resurrect” the early novels. They begin with The Rocksburg Railroad Murders (1972). (Gary Carden is a writer, storyteller and lecturer whose book, Mason Jars in the Flood, was recently named Book of the Year by the Appalachian Writers Association. He can be reached at gcarden498@aol.com.)