The Perk, by Mark Gimenez

I first heard of Mark Gimenez when I read a review of his first book, The Color of Law, in Texas Monthly a few years ago.  Then I randomly met him, and he gave me a copy of his second novel, The Abduction.  I have no idea why this guy is not more well-known around here.  He lives in Bedford, and as best I can tell, his books are difficult to obtain in the U.S.  According to his web site, they sell pretty well in the English-speaking world outside the U.S., but he remains little-known here.  Of his 5 published novels, the Bedford Public Library only has 2, as does the Fort Worth Library.  I had to get The Perk through inter-library loan.

All that said, The Perk, like his other 2 novels I've read, was a terrific story.  He's been compared to John Grisham, and I like Grisham, but Grisham, I know Mark Gimenez, and you're no Mark Gimenez.  Grisham's novels are more like a really great bag of potato chips: you can't stop eating them, and they taste good, and you're disappointed when the bag's empty, but then you realize you haven't really eaten much of anything, and it all tasted pretty much the same.  Next time you see that bag of chips, you'll have some more, with the same result.  With The Perk, it's like you're eating a full-course meal.  Ocassionally you get a dish or a flavor you didn't expect, but it was all prepared by a master chef, delicious, well-planned, and satisfying.  You end up wishing the meal was not over, and looking forward to the next feast.

The Perk opens with a major Hollywood star picking up girls in his limo during an Austin film festival; the beautiful young girls clamoring for his attention are a perk of his fame.  He picks one looker from the crowd, fills her with liquor and drugs and has his way with her, after which she passes out and dies from an overdose.  Frightened for his future, he dumps her body by the road near her hometown of Fredericksburg.

Several years later, Beck Hardin, local football hero, returns to Fredericksburg after a long absence.  He graduated and went to Notre Dame on a football scholarship, stayed for law school and a high-flying career in corporate law.  Only after his wife's death from breast cancer does he decide to return to the father and the town and the state he had sworn never to return to.  At his father's urging, he runs for county judge in a special election and wins on a fluke (but a fluke that turns out to be significant for the plot).  And he agrees to help his old high school pal, now the local high school football coach, find his daughter's killer.

With that case in the background, and the statute of limitations running down, Beck takes on the docket of a small-town county court.  It turns out to be more complicated than he thought it would be.  He finds himself in the middle of an ongoing culture clash between the old-time Germans, Mexican immigrants, and newly arrived former urbanites.  Old boy networks, town traditions, and cultural conflicts make Beck's job quite a bit more interesting.  Gimenez touches on an almost dizzying array of issues: integreation of public schools, the professionalization of high school football, illegal immigration, changing rural economies, the afore-metioned loss of a spouse to breast cancer, drug use among rural teens, racism, justice, prejudice, family relationships, grief, and more.

I particularly like his jab at the goat farmers.  Fredericksburg, in LBJ country, benefitted from President Johnson's mohair subsidy.  So area goat farmers grew wealthy raising goats and receiving these agricultural subsidies.  When Clinton eliminated the subsidy, many goat farmers had to find another way to make a living.  When one of the goat farmers criticizes the Mexicans born taking welfare, J.B., Beck's straight-talking dad, points out that the local German goat farmers got rich taking government money.  The goat farmer didn't take that too well.

Aside from the running jab against the mohair subsidy, I have a feeling The Perk won't be a very popular read in Fredericksburg, especially among the German establishment.  Gimenez paints Fredericksburg as a town divided, ruled by the old German families, many of whom have intermarried to maintain land and power.  Public offices are passed from father to son, and cousins wed to keep land in the family.  The Mexican population is mostly illegals who work at the turkey plany.  I know fiction often calls for caricatures, and Gimenez does leave some outs ("most of the Germans aren't like that," sympathetic portrayals of Mexicans), but he still portrays the town as a facade of a small-town paradise with an dark, dirty underbelly.

Gimenez's characters are believable and relatable.  The Perk sucks the reader in not only to the richly complex plot but also into the back stories and personal lives of the characters.  He does have a tendency toward melodrama, but he uses the intertwining stories effectively and purposefully to move the plot along.  The resolution emphasizes a major theme: Beck is reminded repeatedly that the legal system is concerned with the law, not necesarily with justice.  Justice is done, for the most part, but Beck's experiences demontrate the limits of law in bringing about justice.

I hope Gimenez gets the exposure he deserves and starts selling more books in the U.S.  The Perk is a gripping read, highly enjoyable, just as his other 2 novels were.  Pick it up and enjoy a great story with memorable characters and a taste of Texas.  Just don't stay up 'til 3 a.m. reading it, like I did.

[One more thing: Gimenez's books are available through a store in England called The Book Depository.  They ship to the U.S. for free!]