Hallucinatory noir
Stasio: A Novel in 3 Parts
by Tamas Dobozy
Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2024
$22.00 / 9781772142266
Reviewed by Logan Macnair
*
On two occasions and by two separate characters is southern Ontarian lawman Anthony de Stasio accused of being a “terrible detective” and rhetorically questioned as to whether he can remember actually solving any cases during his career. Harsh, but these charges my have validity given Stasio’s idiosyncratic penchant for overcomplicating cases in ways that, typical of the noir detective genre, often fail to lead to ‘satisfying’ conclusions where law and justice neatly and cleanly prevail over the criminal element.
In Kitchener-based (Nanaimo-born) author Tamas Dobozy’s Stasio: A Novel in 3 Parts we are made privy to three such cases worked by the titular detective. Each offers us insight into his unique investigative style while also serving as a window into three distinct points of his progressively paranoid and unsustainable personal life.
In the first novella, Steyr Mannilicher, Stasio tracks the ownership history of the ornate multiple-murder weapon found at a grisly apartment crime scene. This first novella, by manner of it being both the shortest and having the most kinetic pacing of the three, serves as an effective introduction into the character and world of Stasio–a world tinged by vaguely supernatural elements that may or may not be entirely the fabrication of Stasio’s increasingly overtired mind.
It is here that we also meet some of Stasio’s supporting cast, most notably his wife Amy who, suffering from a terminal and seemingly undiagnosable medical condition, has been rendered wheelchair-bound and increasingly dependent on her already overworked husband. Stasio’s internally conflicting sense of duty and guilt regarding Amy causes him to withdraw from her, retreating further and deeper into his work in ways that are averse to both his mental health and his professional acumen.
Case in point, by the time we catch up with Stasio in the second novella, Photo Array, he has been suspended, demoted, and relegated to the archives of cold and unsolved cases following some truly disconcerting choices made toward the end of Steyr Mannilicher. The personal life of Stasio, now professionally reprimanded and sleep-deprived to the point of constant exhaustion, has further degraded, such that he is secretly spending his nights at the precinct, seemingly as a means of avoiding having to deal with the quickly deteriorating health of his wife.
The case this time involves piecing together the tragic ending of a complex family drama by way of old photographs and via the help of some truculent and fatigue-induced hallucinatory visions. Here the world of Stasio is expanded and rounded out by a new set of characters (including his superior officer turned paramour Eileen Lefferts) while we also gain a deeper insight into his process and start to realize exactly why it is that he earned the ‘terrible detective’ accusations that would later be levied against him. It is partially the result of his conduct and actions, but I also wonder if, on a more meta level, it has to do with Stasio being a character that is seemingly anachronistic to the modern day in which the novellas are set.
In the third and lengthiest of the novellas, The Unaffiliated, Stasio attempts to untangle how a new victim’s connection to a network of political activists and movements led to his recent murder.
Anthony de Stasio is an amalgam of nearly every standard hardboiled trope and detective noir characteristic there is. He drinks too much. He barely sleeps. His diet is comprised entirely of take-out food. He’s willing to bend or break the rules in the interest of the case. He’s emotionally taciturn. He identifies more with the criminals, street people, and downtrodden of the city than with his coworkers or with polite society more broadly. The apartment he later moves into is described (in one of Dobozy’s many starkly evocative passages) as little more than an empty room with an old mattress on the floor, bereft of any personal touches or decorations. It is, then, not surprising to see a character ripped straight from a 1950s detective story faltering and failing with such frequency in a modern world that he seems not to fully understand nor relate to.
I found the exploration of this political movement—or cult, as it might more accurately be labelled— complete with snippets of manifestos (inspired more by the hardline electoral boycott ideology of twenthieth-century utopian/anarchist groups than by, say, someone like Ted Kaczynski), charismatically manipulative leaders, and its own complex internal social network to be the most compelling setting of the three cases/novellas.
By this point, the reader should be well aware of the fact that Stasio’s mind (and the occasional glimpses we are given into it) is an increasingly fraught, paranoid, and often unreliable one, meaning that they will be at least partially responsible for parsing out the motivations behind his decisions, and just how ‘real’ his experiences, interactions, and conclusions actually are.
Dobozy’s take on the detective mystery format is heightened beyond the occasionally tired and predictable standard of the genre via his unique prose style (one that eschews punctuation and paragraph breaks for dialogue, a deviation of convention that, despite requiring some time for me to adjust to, ends up working rather well for the style in which the stories are told) and his willingness to incorporate elements of humour (it should be noted that despite the typically dark nature of the content, plot, and characters, Dobozy (Ghost Geographies) finds plenty of room for witticism and levity in his prose) and borderline surrealism.
*
Logan Macnair is a novelist and college instructor based in Burnaby. His academic research is primarily focused on the online narrative, recruitment, and propaganda campaigns of various political extremist movements. His second novel Troll (Now Or Never Publishing, 2023) is a fictionalized account based on his many years of studying online extremist groups. [Editor’s note: Jessica Poon reviewed Troll in BRC. Logan Macnair reviewed Andrew Battershill, Kate Black, Kawika Guillermo, and James Hoggan with Grania Litwin for BCR.]
*
The British Columbia Review
Interim Editors, 2023-25: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie
Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an online book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, Maria Tippett, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.
“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster