The Hazards of Occupational Hazards

Almost a month after the last storm, and the snow is still piled so high on street corners that I can’t wait for the bus on the sidewalk, and have to stand out n the intersection – not on the busy streets, Center and 42nd, but on the side streets, 114th and Pierce. The bus lights seem brighter lately; maybe they have new buses, or maybe I’m just happy to see them coming.

On the bus, I really got into Occupational Hazards for a while. It’s by Jonathan Segura, about whom I can find no detailed biographical information, but who evidently spent a good deal of time in Omaha. Don’t misunderstand – the book is repulsive and clichéd. What kept me going was the setting – Omaha – and the plot centered around real events dressed up a bit.

The real events are the renovation of an area near downtown, which happened around 2002 or so; and the Franklin Credit Union scandal, which came to a head around 1988.

The book is repulsive because of its inability to fashion a paragraph without the F word. It’s cliched because the next two most frequently used words are “cigarette” and “grease”: every place the “hero goes has to be dirty, the food he eats has to be greasy, the people he hangs with have to be scamming something. Get it? It's noir! Segura's read Dash Hammet and Raymond Chandler, but doesn't understand them. On second thought, maybe he just read synopses -- is there a Cliff Notes for The Maltese Falcon? The masochism (I assume his hero is fulfilling some fantasy of the author) builds and bills to a truly disgusting climax, and then the hero is saved by a deus ex -- literal -- machina.

And Segura should have spent a dime to rent The Incredibles, for a lesson on bad-guy-monologues. It is especially hackneyed when they bad guys kill everyone who crosses them, until the hero comes along – the one who can do them the most damage – and they keep him alive. Sure.

I applaud the attempt to dig out interest in the Franklin cover-up, but I wish it had been done by someone who can write a good story.

Sad to say, but Occupational Hazards is terrible.