A master of the thriller

Ross Thomas, the multiple-award-winning crime-fiction writer who died in Southern California in 1995, wrote about people “like himself,� he once said slyly: “People with a past.�

Surely, though, the raffish crew of domestic and international wheelers and dealers, fixers and schemers who populated the 20 novels Thomas wrote from 1966 to 1994 (and five additional books written under the pseudonym Oliver Bleeck) had pasts much more colorful than their creator’s.

Then again, maybe not.

Thomas, born in Oklahoma in 1926, was an Oklahoma City newspaper reporter, served in the U.S. infantry during World War II, was public relations director for the National Farmers Union, and then president of a Colorado public relations firm. For two years -- at the height of the Cold War -- he was a freelance reporter in Bonn. Then for three years, according to material he provided for a reference work, he was “representative for Dolan Associates� in the African state of Ibadan (Nigeria). After that, from 1964 to 1966, his resume simply reads: “consultant, United States government.�

Whatever the details, Thomas clearly had an abundance of real-world experience to draw on when he wrote the first of his complex tales of politically related intrigue and chicanery at age 40. Now, a number of Thomas’ works are returning to print after too long an absence, with prefaces by such admirers as Donald E. Westlake and Lawrence Block. (Promised for May are “The Cold War Swap� and “The Fools in Town Are on Our Side.�)

“Out on the Rim� is as good a place as any to become acquainted, or reacquainted, with the world of Ross Thomas: a moral-political universe parallel to but rather different from the one described by high-profile pundits in serious news media. It’s a world peopled by such can-do characters as the 6-foot-2 Artie Wu, who claims to be “the illegitimate son of the illegitimate daughter of the last Emperor of China,� and a pretender to that country’s throne; and Wu’s partner since their youths -- the swift-moving, lethal Quincy Durant.

Working here in uneasy alliance with Wu and Durant is Maurice “Otherguy� Overby, “housesitter to the stars� of the Malibu movie and rock colonies (when they’re in rehab) and chaser after dubious fortunes; so nicknamed because, whatever awful thing has happened, “some other guy always did it.�

And there are dozens of equally vivid minor players, in this caper that bounces from Washington, D.C., to Beverly Hills, to Manila; for example, the Graf von Lahusen: “whose ancestral estates lay unfortunately on the wrong side of the Elbe. The thirty-seven-year-old count had dropped out of the Sorbonne at nineteen to take the hippie trail to Southeast Asia where he soon discovered that his title, looks and four languages could earn him a decent if questionable living.�

Hiring and directing the main players -- or at least setting them in motion -- is someone with a similarly checkered, if more Establishment, resume: the published poet Harry Crites, a well-connected fixer with an apartment in the Watergate, clients in South America and Egypt, and a government background best summarized as “varied and murky.�

Crites puts Wu, Durant and Overby together with a terrorism think-tank expert named Booth Stallings and his temporary bodyguard, Georgia Blue, in the just-post-Marcos Philippines. The mission at hand -- allegedly financed by a consortium of business interests -- is to bribe a longtime guerrilla leader down from the hills and into exile. Five-million dollars is the lure: a sum so tempting, it seems unlikely ever to leave the possession of those assigned to give it away. And maybe those whom Crites serves have factored that into the scheme.

At a certain point, these conniving players go separate, if equal, ways, following scripts (and treasure maps) of their own devising. As Wu notes: “Everything’s reached that delicate stage, Georgia, where compartmentalization is best.� Here, then, is Overby, figuring his next move: “When he reached the sixth move, he stopped because after the sixth there were too many permutations. But the first move would be to buy the gun....�

And that gun will get used, as will various other firearms and knives.

In such a context, there’s no time for political theory. “It’s not the principle of the thing, Booth,� Durant reminds Stallings. “It’s the money.�

When someone asks Stallings, “What do you do for politics these days, Booth?� he answers: “I do without.�

It’s not that these adventurers are ignorant of their game’s political stakes; it’s more that they see the game as rigged. Even the guerrilla leader has no illusions about his role: “I’m their blessed communist menace ... to justify the coup that’ll dump Aquino and get things back to normal where deals can be cut and profits made.�

“Out on the Rim� somewhat resembles one of Graham Greene’s “entertainments�: a smartly written thriller that doesn’t sermonize but is still aware of political realities. The book acknowledges those grim truths in passing, through telling, sideways glances: Wu’s observation of the professional syndicate of beggar children in Manila, some of whom in time will “graduate� to being child prostitutes; in Stallings noting that, despite all the new buildings in Manila since he was there in World War II, “the slums were just as he remembered them.�

Working behind the scenes and between the cracks, “Out on the Rim’s� operators hustle their way through a twisty plot filled with maybe one more surprise than even seasoned Thomas readers might anticipate.

“Briarpatch,� Thomas’ 1984 Edgar Award-winning novel, has its quota of shenanigans too, involving a murdered female police detective in an unnamed city (“the capital of a state located just far enough south and west to make jailhouse chili a revered cultural treasure�), a native son of that town who’s returned after making his fortune in Southeast Asia “in the purchase and sale of defensive weaponry�; and the latter’s old partner, a person of interest to a Senate subcommittee trying to get the two ex-associates to give up the goods on one another.

Benjamin Dill, brother of the murdered cop, works as a consultant for that subcommittee. When he goes home to settle his sister’s affairs, his D.C. bosses suggest he put the trip to official use by getting an affidavit from the ex-arms man -- who happens to be his childhood friend. Soon, Dill is up to his sizable ears in municipal and federal intrigue, as he tries -- all at once -- to find the truth behind his sister’s death, do his employers’ bidding, and stay as loyal as he can to his old friend.

“Briarpatch� doesn’t stint on violent action. But filled as it is with the local lore of that unnamed town that seems to bear much resemblance to Thomas’ own birthplace, it’s a more reflective and personal-seeming book than “Out on the Rim.� It affords the occasion for Thomas to display his considerable writerly gifts.

And Thomas was a gifted writer, with a shrewd intelligence and much subtlety beneath his razzle-dazzle. Firmly in the American grain, he could describe the changes over decades in a city neighborhood as sparely and effectively as John O’Hara. Some of his rogues would be at home with Mark Twain. (Wu, pretender to the throne of the emperor of China, might be a lineal descendant of the Lost Dauphin encountered by Huck Finn.) Jake Spivey, the former poor boy returned in dubious splendor, is a sort of post-Vietnam Jay Gatsby.

Thomas had a droll sense of humor and a fine descriptive flair, both well in evidence in “Briarpatch.� Some examples: A short-lived afternoon newspaper, summed up as “a New York tabloid that leaned a little left until it fell over.� A young woman, casually dressed but with attitude: “She had the look of old money long gone.� The more dangerous half of a pair of thugs: “The second man was thin the way a knife is thin.�

Through his thrillers, Thomas continued a tradition of American writers who brought news about the way things really worked in this country and around the world. The news by turns amused and appalled its bearer; and, like “Briarpatch’s� Dill (whom we may be correct in seeing as in part a self-portrait of his author), this duality of perception was expressed in his countenance: “The mouth (was) thin, wide, and apparently remorseless, or merry if the joke were good, the company pleasant....The eyes were large and gray and in a certain light looked soft, gentle, and even innocent. Then the light would change, the innocence would vanish, and the eyes looked like year-old ice.�

It’s good to see the world again through Ross Thomas’ cool, clear gaze.