44 Here Comes Coy to Save the Motherland

[Robin Landseadel]

On Oct 17, 2009, at 5:46 PM, alice wellintown wrote:

> What a pair, this Coy Hope; a pair of ragged claws scuttling in and
> out of bathroom through suburban doors and silent sleaze.

And yet, and at the same time Coy Harligen is artistically gifted.

Here in the midst of L.A.'s smokey/smoggy seventies haze, sitting in  
with L.A.'s best-known post-psychedelic surf band is a session sax- 
player most comfortable ripping through Tom Jobim's charts. This is a  
noir and the noir convention is that the corruption rubs off on  
everyone. But some pigs are more equal than others.  Sure, Doc's as  
flawed as anyone else in this day-glow noir. But he has a gift—much  
like Lew Basnight's gift as  psychic P.I.  in Against the Day. What  
sets Coy apart from the other sleazeballs in this book is that he has  
a bonified gift.  Doc's quest in this romance develops after  
witnessing something worth saving from the oncoming deluge. Now Doc's  
quest is to get the Harligen family back together, come hell or high  
water.

The Doc/Coy story reminds me of Philip Marlowe's quests in Raymond  
Chandler's novels—Marlowe assists drinking acquaintance Terry Lennox  
in fleeing from the police. Marlowe suffers mightily for that  
indiscretion at the hands of the cops and one senses that Marlowe  
favors Terry Lennox simply because he isn't one of the cops. There's  
exceptions to Marlowe's rule of 'don't trust the cops' in Bernie Ohls  
and Doc, at least initially, trusted Bigfoot [more or less.] In the  
end, knight-errant Larry Sportello does a favor for someone he hardly  
knows, much as Marlowe did for Terry.