Queenpin

Queenpin is the story of a young woman in a nameless town, presumably somewhere in the US. She catches the eye of Gloria Denton, a woman working with the mob, involved in several illegal activities. The young woman – who is not named during the course of the book – impresses Gloria, and Gloria takes her under her wing and begins teaching her the ropes. She launders money, makes deliveries and pick-ups, and in general, runs errands for Gloria.

However, when our young apprentice gets herself in a bind she has to decide how far she’s prepared to go to protect herself.

If you do not wish to be exposed to any spoilers, you should stop reading now. In order to write an objective in-depth assessment of the work the content must be referred to. Otherwise you end up saying, “It isn’t good” or “I didn’t like it” or something comparably generic, and that isn’t a critical assessment – it’s a judgment that’s unsupported.

The first thing I had trouble with was the anchorless aspect. I had the southwest in my head just by assumption, but was completely thrown by a comment one of the characters made, referring to the police as “Mounties”. Perhaps it’s because I’m a Canadian, and the Mounties have been our national police force for 88 years, and prior to that part of the country was policed by the RNWMP, who were also dubbed Mounties… But it pulled me right out of the story. I was baffled – had Americans ever called their police Mounties? Maybe they had, but as I tried to search online to see if I could support the phrase I was disconnected from the experience of reading the book. At the time, I could only find Canadian references to Mounties, so I eventually returned to the book with the nagging question weighing on my brain. I have since been told that county cops in some places are sometimes called Mounties, but this was one of the main reasons the anchorless aspect of the book didn’t work for me. I can speculate that it’s supposed to be Any Town USA – much the same as not naming the protagonist makes her Any Woman – but suggesting any town in the US is a reach. I would assume the intent is to suggest the events could happen anywhere, but I’m not sure I agree. In the Bible belt? Doubtful. And it was something I was prompted to think about when I hit the Mountie line, because I certainly didn’t believe it could be Any Town Canada.

Another reason the anchorless aspect didn’t work for me was because I never got a sense of place. Perhaps the fact that I’m not American worked against me. After reading the book I spoke to a few other people. One had assumed it was set in New Jersey, another suggested Kansas City, and Chicago-area was also suggested. It’s for the reader to decide if that matters to them, and some readers may not be bothered by this at all.

This brings me to the idea of the protagonist as Any Woman, or Every Woman. Neither sit well with me, perhaps because I am a woman, and the protagonist isn’t any woman I’ve ever known.

I could believe in Gloria. From the scars she carried to her ability to read people to the way she handled herself situation after situation I fully believed in her as a very tough, shrewd woman managing herself in a dangerous criminal enterprise, always looking out for her own best interests first, but still having the capacity to care about her underling and try to shield her. She brought that feminine aspect to her job: After discovering her apprentice had betrayed her, had Gloria been a man I feel certain the book would have ended there, or at least been forced to change narrators by necessity of the death of our protagonist. Instead, Gloria shows mercy.

However, what I didn’t believe in was Gloria giving her young apprentice so much rope so fast after the apprentice betrayed her. I believed Gloria spotted the carefully executed con in a heartbeat, only waiting to confirm the details before confronting her underling. When Gloria confronts her it’s chilling. Scenes like that showcase Abbott’s obvious ability to create tension and leave a reader on the edge of their seat, as they wait to see what will happen.

Throughout the story we’re given the impression through the protagonist’s own communication with police that almost all the local officers are on the take, paid to the look the other way, and the ones who aren’t can’t get around their shady bosses and make any charges stick.

That left me wondering how it was possible that there would be a huge shake-up in the police department, new cops coming in who weren’t on mob payroll, without Gloria knowing about it. If Gloria’s bosses wanted to hang her out to dry, and had cut her out of the loop in order to expose her, I could have accepted that. However, if that were the case they wouldn’t have been persuaded not to move against Gloria’s apprentice after her betrayal, and there is no indication that was the case from within the story.

In other words, this foolproof, tightly run criminal enterprise was really a boat with holes taking on so much water you couldn’t bail it out fast enough.

Which brings us back to our protagonist. Why did she want the life? I really have no idea. I guess it came down to easy money, escaping poverty. Whatever the case, we’re presented with a girl who seems to have good instincts for deceit from the beginning, but who is unable to control herself and stay focused. This is where several little problems come up.

For one thing, you can’t plan attraction. There was nothing ever to indicate what appealed to our young apprentice, and you also can’t rely on luck to attract attention. Vic, our protagonist’s love interest, does nothing to try to get her, specifically, to notice him. As someone who went in and out of casinos daily, our protagonist would have witnesses scenes like the one that ultimately introduces her to Vic many times before. Seeing high rollers on a winning streak would be nothing new. Her sudden, compelling interest in him is a fluke, and that’s what makes it hard to believe it was all part of a carefully planned, elaborate con job.

Add to that, her sexual predilections. I had trouble with this. As much as I don’t enjoy reading pages and pages of graphic sex, vague references to doing that and that were as generic as the nameless protagonist and unidentified location were intended to be, and didn’t work for me either. I suppose the reader is expected to fill in the blanks with what extreme sexual activities we think fit the bill, but perhaps I’ve read too many books that contained just enough extreme sex for me to be left thinking whatever this girl conceived in her mind as being that dirty and unspeakable probably wasn’t that dirty. I had the feeling I was supposed to be shocked by their activities, but this rang hollow for me, since I didn’t know what they were doing. There were other things in the book that did shock me, but this wasn’t one of them.

And again, being a perfect sexual fit for someone isn’t something you can scheme that easily. It’s one thing if you’re seducing a much older woman who’s lonely, but this is a young, attractive woman who could have her pick of men to satisfy her. She’s also in a business that requires discretion, and she’s not going to settle for average in the relationship department.

Our protagonist’s sexual addiction to Vic was another problem for me. She becomes the infatuated teenager with stars in her eyes who can’t keep her legs together – and blows off her job at times to satisfy her urges. One thing to note from that is how careless that is, particularly in her line of work, and then again, we’re asked to believe her boss doesn’t notice as this goes on for several weeks.

Ultimately, we’re asked to believe this impulsive girl who can’t control herself is going to upstage her boss and outmaneuver her in the end. That’s where the story unraveled completely for me. Whatever her faults, Gloria was always careful. Her life depended on it. She’d been warned before and was never careless. She would have noticed what was going on. One could ask if perhaps it was a test, and speculate that Gloria did see what was coming but wanted her apprentice to walk into the trap so that she could deal with her and try to ensure her future loyalty, but if that was the case Gloria wouldn’t have needed to do anything to handle the situation afterwards. She would have been prepared for all of the fall-out and confronted her underling immediately, which she didn’t do.

I believe Gloria would have been extremely vigilant in the wake of her apprentice’s betrayal. After all, this is a woman with the scars on her chest, demonstrating the lessons she’d been taught about loyalty. It is not just her underling who will be on the chopping block if she screws up again – Gloria herself will fall as well because she stepped out on the limb for her, and she knows it. Therefore, I find it impossible to believe Gloria would have taken such a risk with her apprentice so soon after the betrayal and subsequent murder.

Furthermore, when the cops want to speak to our protagonist, we’re told that she’s been paying attention and is pretty sure Gloria didn’t have anyone following her. And yet she wasn’t paying attention enough before to realize she was being followed, observed? You aren’t a pro at spotting surveillance the first time you try to do it. This is something that would have been part of her job, and early on, at the track, she was tested in her ability to handle unexpected situations.

How could Vic have been planning to set her up from before their first meeting, and our protagonist not even notice?

Finally, we come to the end of the book, and the apprentice has moved up in the world, taking over the equivalent of Gloria’s position with a different boss. Do I believe that another shrewd mastermind of a budding criminal organization in the same town wouldn’t have a better sense of what really happened to Gloria, that the apprentice snitched to the cops?

In a word, no. To not at least be highly suspicious…

We’re asked to believe this young girl is smarter than them all, that for the years of experience within the mob that they have, none of these seasoned criminals can see the truth about her and how disloyal she can be.

The scars on Gloria’s chest were proof enough these people would handle a woman as readily as a man. They didn’t play around.

Which left me wondering how our protagonist managed to have two good legs left to walk away on in the end. Certainly if Amos Mackey could find her, Gloria’s bosses would have come calling first, and demanded their pound of flesh for her sins. I don’t care if their organization was faltering: My impression of these types of criminal organizations is that you don’t let anyone rat you out and live to tell about it.

There are parts within the story that do show what a capable storyteller Abbott is. Ultimately, I found myself more interested in Gloria than our protagonist, which speaks to Abbott’s ability to create compelling characters. The consequences of the apprentice’s betrayal were shocking, and even as a reader not fully engaged in the story I felt the dramatic tension and wanted to know how things would unfold. Perhaps that’s a greater compliment to the author than one would realize, because if you’re fully engrossed in a book that’s working for you, it’s easy to believe in such scenes. It’s much more difficult to pull in someone who hasn’t given themselves over wholly to the world you’re portraying.

While this particular offering of Abbott’s didn’t work for me personally, it has been widely praised and nominated for awards, and I am clearly in the minority with my opinion. All I can say is that I will be seeking out more work by Abbott in the future, in the hopes that other books capitalize on what I perceive to be her strengths.