Wiley's Lament

February 10, 2003
Noir aficionados will embrace Waiwaiole's impressive if slightly unwieldy debut, a somber, violent tale of loss and redemption. Wiley, a haunted, solitary man living on the fringes of society in Portland, Ore., copes with a failed marriage and a stalled career, eking out a meager living by playing poker and robbing the occasional drug dealer. Then Wiley's estranged daughter, Lizzie, turns up naked with her throat slit in an airport motel. Wiley suspects his ex-best friend and kingpin of Portland's sex industry, Leon, who'd been romantically involved with Lizzie. When Wiley finally tracks him down, Leon maintains his innocence and vows to help find the real killer. The point-of-view shifts between Wiley and that of the killer (and this is no spoiler, as we learn his identity early on), a sadistic DEA agent, who systematically murders other escorts who can connect him to Lizzie's death. His antics have his crooked boss, who enlisted him to help bring down a drug dealer, scrambling to cover up the killings. The body count rises dramatically as Wiley and Leon close in on the rogue agent and the action comes to a bloody conclusion. Some repetition and superfluous scenes slow the pace, while one wishes for more about what led up to Wiley's fall and the breakup of his marriage. The jacket art of a stark motel exterior seen through a rosy, rain-splattered windshield nicely captures the novel's lurid mood.