Available Dark: A Crime Novel [Hardcover]

Available Dark follows Cassandra Neary, a damaged, self-destructive and somewhat washed-up art photographer, who first appeared in Hand's 2007 novel, Generation Loss. A novel with Neary as a protagonist is bound to be a wild ride. She's prone to sudden changes in direction, abruptly taking off for an isolated island off of Maine (in Generation Loss), or to meet a shady Finnish collector of death-obsessed photographs, or chase a long-lost friend/lover who might be in Iceland. Along the way she encounters murder and threat, and often manages to multiply her own troubles by the following her own badly damaged sense of direction. Complicating all this is Cass's painful personal history, which lingers in her present despite the passage of years. Some people deal with adversity by bucking up and getting on with things, while others self-medicate using a cocktail of antisocial behavior, emotional avoidance, and a constant flow of mood-altering substances. Cass fits in the latter, and for this reason her problems aren't so much solved as left to accumulate, trailing in her wake.

Such a compelling central character does much of the work in engaging the reader. On top of this we have unusual settings (Reykjavik and Iceland's outlying areas are especially exotic, well drawn here) and such intriguing milieu as the worlds of photography concerned with death and folklore, the Scandinavian Black Metal scene, and obscure underground cult-like groups dedicated to resurrecting ancient Norse worship. The book is packed with vivid details, bizarre characters, and fascinating and varied artistic and cultural obsessions.

Most of Hand's earlier writing was constrained to Fantasy and related genres, but here she steps away from the impossible. Available Dark concerns itself with real world situations, characters and conflicts, yet these convey all the bizarre extremity of the strangest alt-world fantasy. It's possible some of her devoted readers may be disappointed by what is essentially a mainstream thriller, but I don't feel Available Dark suffers in the least from the lack of overt "impossible" elements. Normally if one of my favorite genre writers took a detour into the mainstream, I might say, "That's nice, now get back to what you do best." In this case, I find the character and settings so compelling I'd happily follow a Cass Neary series.

Hand seems to me a writer's writer, less concerned with superficial effects or pursuit of the latest publishing industry fad, more interested in crafting artful, expressive prose and shining light upon genuine and true "real life" moments. With Available Dark, Elizabeth Hand walks the tightrope between more accessible mainstream entertainments on one hand, and on the other maintaining a high artistic standing in the unflinching exploration of the dark and exotic. Available Dark constitutes yet another proof of Hand's status as one of the very best writers working today, in any genre. I can't wait for more Cassandra Neary.

Cassandra Neary receives a voice message from Investigator Jonathan Wheedler. It is partly due to this voice message that Cassandra accepts an assignment from Anton Bredahl, a guy she just met over email. The other reason being that Anton wants Cassandra to travel to famed photographer Illkka Kaltunnen's house to assess some art work of his to verify that they are real. Plus, Anton is going to pay Cassandra a lot of money. Cassandra could really use the money and this is a good way to leave town and avoid the Investigator.

Cassandra meets Illkka and views his photos. Everything seems to be going well until Cassandra sees on the news that Illkka has been murdered. Cassandra realizes than that she has been set up but by whom and why?

Ms. Hand is a new to me author. Ms. Hand has a unique style of writing. In what I mean by this is that I felt both connected and disconnected with this story and the characters in an odd, good sort of way. Connected in the fact that I could not stop reading this book as it was different and intriguing but disconnected in the way that it was like I was in the audience watching a movie but never relating to the characters and what they were going through in this story. I felt that the characters deserved what happened to them. Due to their sick and twisted obsession with death and preserving it through a photograph. I would categorize Available Dark as more on the suspense side than I would mystery. Overall, I was intrigued enough by Ms. Hand's writing that I would try her again in the future.

Hand's novel is by turns fascinating and repellent, drug-fueled, disconnected photojournalist Cassandra Neary bearing the scars of her love affair with East Village nihilism, long past her sell-by date, yet still enamored of subjects no longer animated by a life force, her book of images, Dead Girls, a cult collector's item. Her shabby apartment cluttered with memories and the detritus of self-abuse, Cass's gift and burden is an artist's eye for genius, a nirvana rarely reached since those first heady years, the craving for chemicals unchanged. An old photograph of a former lover that arrives in the mail from Reykjavik, Iceland, and an unexpected assignment to evaluate a series of "murderabilia" images being sold by a famous former fashion photographer in Helsinki, Finland, are the catalysts for Neary's journey across the globe, the first to earn much-needed funds, the second to reunite with her soul's jagged mirror-image, Quinn O'Boyle.

"I don't care who's buying the round as long as he pays." Cassandra's cavalier attitude changes when she inspects the famous photographer's extraordinary series of "Yuleboys" (Jolasveinar), Nordic demons traced to the earliest religious beliefs in the area, the photographs priceless in a flourishing black market specializing in the esoterica of perversion. A growing discomfort shadows Cass's every move after viewing the images; as instinct inspires her impulsive flight to Iceland, headlines of brutal murders explode in Finland, the perfectly-ordered world of a genius shattered in a gruesome tableau of battered flesh. Cass navigates the dystopian landscape of an economically-ravished Reykjavik, reconnecting with the elusive Quinn only to discover that murder has followed in a wake of violence, danger her traveling companion, evoking Neary's routinely confrontational response to threat.

Paralleling Neary's emotional state, Reykjavik exists in the absence of light, strewn with vacant buildings and desperate souls. Fleeing a murderer's pursuit, Cass collides with her secret past, enmeshed with Quinn in an unraveling confederacy of voyeurs, a pact of jaded collectors stalking the illuminated death. As in Generation Loss, Hand's sharp prose is as seductive and dreadful as the chemicals flooding Neary's veins, an inanimate camera's eye capturing the fleeting spark of life, the incandescent moment on the bridge between here and there, the ambiguity of perfection and decay. The depraved, the criminal, the indifferent and the mad roar in metal rock cacophony, Cass and Quinn forced into complicity. Provocative and unpredictable, Cass is compelling in her abandon, a heroine with the social sensitivity of ground glass, this time flying too close to the sun, a fate Cass intuits long before her flight to Finland: "The edge where I'd lived for all these years was starting to look like a precipice." Luan Gaines/2012.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 9 reviews  4.7 out of 5 stars