Nameless Dame by Bart Schneider

I’ve just finished my third novel from authors living in the heart of the West County Russian River corridor.  Two months ago it was Pat Nolan’s, “On the Road to Las Cruces.”  Last month it was, “In The Rough” by John McCarty.  Now I’ve finished, “Nameless Dame,” subtitled “Murder on the Russian River”.  It’s always fun, even with “changed names” to protect the innocent, to match up characters, or parts of characters, with actual persons, possibly living.

The author can’t get away with writing just for us locals; we only number a few thousand, and far fewer who can afford $15.95 for a book.  So these tales are legitimate novels, probably selling better in New Jersey than here in Guerneville.  Nonetheless, it’s nice to read about people and places, from Jenner to Forestville, along the River.

The murdered nameless dame is a tweaker who likes her speedballs a little too much.  Most of the book’s characters only admit to recreational marijuana, however the sexual mores along the river are depicted as a wide-open, free sex community, reminiscent of the pre-AIDS 1960’s.

Our heros (!?), an ex-detective and a vacationing P.I. are as milk-toasty as any two Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence should be.  These Laurel & Hardy figures must totally confuse the East Coast readers who might be more used to Boston Parker’s P.I. Spenser, or Chicago’s VI Warshawski.

So, as a whodonit, who cares?  The world might be a better place without most of these degenerate deadbeats.  But it’s probably fun for the eastcoasters to get a glimpse at how really weird these Northern Californians truly are: getting drugged up and reciting dead poets writings; never honestly working unless you count prostitution and drug-dealing; spending most of one’s time being stoned.

There was a slightly bit more drug-sobriety with “In The Rough”.  However, being slightly more alert, the author dis’d most of the locals around Monte Rio, the scene of the activity in this novel.  As with “Dame”, the more dramatic & violent scenes are fictional, but the underlying premise holds true, River people hate government men, tax men, permit men.  Basically, every one who isn’t local should go away and stay away.  Women are OK as long as they aren’t in the above classes: government, tax, and permit.  Moms, waitresses, working women, even prostitutes are all a part of the community.

I jumped onto a bang-wagon with this book because it described the rebellion over the Monte Rio wastewater projects of the first decade of this century.  Too much of this history has been overlooked by subsequent “study groups”, and I love to toss across this book to novitiates who haven’t discussed the issue with locals to the degree necessary to understand the local reticence about G-men coming in to tell them how & where to shit.

Pat Nolan’s book is the beginning of something big along the River, a West County publishing company.  River Reader, the local bookstore, is our Russian River’s light house along the Russian River corridor that keeps the artisan’s light burning, providing them a last bastion of vocal outlet for feedback on what they are writing.  . 

I’m so old I remember going to the poetry readings at coffee and wine bars (age 20) along upper Grant Avenue back in the fifties.  Not that I was into poetry at the time, but it impressed the hell out of dates.  I never did make sense out of those guys, but later studied and liked the WW-I poets [Brooke, Owen, Sassoon], they had something serious to moan about.

Eventually [I aged even further] I came to understand and like 20^th century poetry, alas a hundred years too late.  I keep trying to learn the new idioms: haikus and manga.