SLOW BEAR by ANTHONY NEIL SMITH + SKULL & BONES by CYPRESS HILL

BY TIM P. WALKER

Anthony Neil Smith’s Slow Bear (Fahrenheit Thirteen, 2020) doesn’t putz around. Within the first few paragraphs, the titular former reservation cop-turned-private eye is offered an unfaithful spouse gig and turns it down because a) he already knows the spouse is cheating and b) he knows who she’s cheating with. Case closed. Not that Slow Bear is a particularly sharp gumshoe, because a few pages later he idiotically gets himself embroiled in a triple murder. For his sins, he’s beaten, exiled, and handed a mission: go work for fellow reservation exile-turned-crooked oil magnate Santana Hunts Along and either dig up dirt on the man or plant some. And right when you think this is might turn into an espionage story, Slow Bear immediately goes and botches that assignment. Then his favorite bartender/sidekick/love interest gets kidnapped under his nose. You can guess how well he goes about cracking that case.

Subversion is the name of Smith’s game in this story, and I am here for it. It's not simply the offbeat plot that flouts the mechanics of detective fictions, it's the portrayal of his gumshoe. The style, wit, and moral code of a Marlowe, Archer, or Hammer—you’ll find none of that in Slow Bear. Deeply corrupt when he was a cop, drunk and lazy as a P.I., and slovenly in his appearance and manner—there are several pages where you can practically smell the stink coming off of Slow Bear. Did I mention he's dumb? Because he's incredibly dumb. 

 

Of course, being that this piece is a subversion of the traits common to detective fiction, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Slow Bear (hey, SPOILER ALERT) eschews anything resembling a tidy ending. Granted, everything that happens in these pages can’t help but steer this story toward a messy finish with precious few ends tied up. That's understandable. Necessary perhaps. Still, I can’t help but feel somewhat underwhelmed. Leaving the door wide open to sequels means that there’s one quality of detective fiction that Slow Bear doesn’t quite subvert—series potential.

 

Then again, it can be fun to bumble around with this idiot. Seeing as how he hangs out in clubs that blast old school hip hop and has attended his share of heavy metal shows as a teenager, I’d like to think that Slow Bear would’ve been into Cypress Hill’s fifth album, Skull & Bones (Columbia, 2000).

 

Capitalizing on the then-cresting nü-metal scene and the fact that they were the only hip hop group of color to get airplay on alt-rock radio, Cypress Hill presented Skull & Bones as a double album with one disc a set of standard hip hop (Skull) and one disc a set of rap metal ala Rage Against the Machine (Bones, which at twenty-three minutes, only takes up side four of the vinyl release). Of course, whether it’s rap or rap metal, Skull & Bones is a very much a product of its time: there’s the obligatory nineties/early aughts hip hop Scarface-referencing track (“Another Victory”), the ultra-obligatory-because-this-is-a-Cypress Hill-album ganja track (“Can I Get a Hit”), the groan-inducing (“Stank Ass Hoe” [sic]), and way too many dick-wiggling boasts to count.

Like the title character of Slow Bear, Skull & Bones is, well, kind of dumb (again—"Stank Ass Hoe"). You know what though—it can be kind of fun if you let it. And as played out as the form was by mid-2000, the rap metal tracks aren’t terrible. The thrashing guitars are tasteful and surprisingly low key—they know to stay the hell out of the way of the flow. And the vocals are devoid of that nasally bray that was the hallmark of certain other rap metal acts who shall remain nameless.

Slow Bear can be fun too. If you let him.

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