Four Kinds of Rain by Robert Ward

Again Robert Ward is a writer whose work is steeped in Baltimore. He may live on the West Coast but his heart is here. He is a review of his latest book from the end of last year, Four Kinds of Rain.

As much as Ward's work on such shows as Hill Street Blues, Miami Vice and New York Undercover are all appreciated I personally hope that we will see more novels from him.

In 1985 Robert Ward wrote a novel, Red Baker that went on to critical acclaim, win awards and become a minor classic in the genre. Minor only because most people haven’t read it. After the success of Red Baker the producers of Hill Street Blues came courting and Ward went on the write scripts for that show as well as others since then. He pops up periodically to write a novel and when he does you better take that opportunity because he doesn’t publish them as often as he should. Four Kinds of Rain is Robert Ward's triumphant return to crime fiction. Largely an unknown commodity outside of genre circles and other writers Four Kinds of Rain is a great book that should increase his name recognition and hopefully we'll see more from him.

Four Kinds of Rain is a thematic descendant or cousin of Red Baker approaching some of the same themes just from a different angle.

Dr. Bob Wells is a middle aged psychiatrist coming out of a divorce and operating a failing free clinic for those in Baltimore. He was an idealistic social activist in the past who has doggedly stuck to his youthful principles while watching his colleagues "sell out" and move on to financial gain and big homes in the suburbs. One of Bob's patients is an art collector who claims to have a mask of a Babylonian god that is worth millions. An early turning point in the novel starts with an age old set up and delivery, that of the rain soaked woman dramatically walking through the door and into Dr. Bob’s heart.

"The front door opened and a very wet woman came hustling in out of the rain. Bob looked up and felt something happening in his chest. Jesus, she was something... She had thick blonde hair and the most beautiful, sensual lips. And her skin... He hadn't seen anything like it before. It was soft and white and her nostrils flared a little, and her eyes, Christ, he'd never seen eyes like those, ever. They were small and almond-shaped and green -- they seemed to hold a secret, or a promise."

All changes when Jesse Reardon enters into his life. The only way that Dr. Bob can have the life that he feels he deserves and that he wants to have with Jesse is to steal the mask and selling it to a rival collector. This decision more so then the actual act will set him on a dangerous path and alter the trajectory of his life.


After the establishment of Dr. Bob’s life and Jesse makes her dramatic entrance Four Kinds of Rain enters into its caper phase. The secret heist is plotted and planned and executed in a fast moving and energetic way. The masterfully quick and seamless transition from one scene to the next is indicative of Wards long career and success as a screenwriter. Ward also makes a brave decision to have the action packed climax of the heist relatively early in the novel. A lesser writer would have saved it until the end. Ward is an assured writer though and deserves our trust and that trust won’t be misplaced.


The final sections of the book draw back into a more personal scope as we bear a tight first person witness to Dr. Bob’s descent into an all consuming greed. He now views his life as choking him. Those closest to him, including his patients, whom he starts to see as the dregs of society, are now viewed with contempt as if they were sucking the life out of him. As he starts to feel more and more trapped by his life his motives and actions become increasingly frantic and desperate.


Like both versions of Dorothy Gale's Somewhere Over the Rainbow that were originally planned to be in the finished cut of The Wizard of Oz, the dark side of the dream is realized in due time. The prize at the end of the rainbow that he held in such a lofty place of prestige becomes the very thing that corrodes his soul. It only makes the greed and selfish behavior hungrier as they feed off of Dr. Bob in an all consuming smorgasbord.


Though it’s easy to pinpoint the exact moment when Dr. Bob begins his slide out of control Ward offers us a seamless transitioning of character and events that in some ways becomes the books biggest strength. Dr. Bob literally becomes the frog in boiling water, not realizing that he's being cooked alive until it’s far too late to do something about it.


The ending of the book is nightmarishly surreal and entirely appropriate in its dramatic closing moments. A hallucinogenic showdown with demons, past and present, real and imagined that takes place in a pornographic theater that almost has to be read to be believed. It is a masterful piece of writing and a great ending to a great book.

Red Baker by Robert Ward

One of the quintessential Baltimore novels. Whereas some novels dabble in Baltimore this one is steeped in it.

Ladies and Gentlemen. Red Baker

"I had believed that if you worked hard and kept yourself and your family together, it was going to pay off. And worse, I had believed that it was not only going to pay off in this world but in the next one, too. That was the greatest laugh of all."

In 1985 Robert Ward, Baltimore native and reporter for The Baltimore Sun, published Red Baker. It was met with critical acclaim and won the PEN West prize for Best Novel of 1985, but nobody bought it and it faded away into obscurity. Wards depiction of the blue collar Baltimoron prompted Hollywood to come to Charm City and lure him away from the paper and from writing further novels. He became a successful screenwriter for Hill Street Blues and other shows including Miami Vice. But in mystery circles everyone was talking about Red Baker and the name was freely given to any who would listen like a secret password. "Psst, have you read Red Baker", or "Do you think Ward will write another novel?" Ward went on to a successful career as a screenwriter, a job that most, even the talented ones, do anonymously. But those who were in the know always waited and watched to see what Ward was going to do next and his career was closely followed. Robert Ward became two things, a writer’s writer and an unknown commodity to any outside of certain circles.

"I, Red Baker" is how the novel starts and those three words start off as an open invitation as we read the book quietly to ourselves. A subtle invitation to substitute Red's "I" with our own. By the end Red will be all of us and his "I" will be universal.

Red, his best friend Dog and 60% of the work force are all laid off from Larmel Steel. This has happened for short periods before but this time is different. It looks as if the lay-off is going to be permanent. Heading to the unemployment office in the hopes of stemming the tide of bills Red is informed that he is "unskilled" labor and will draw less because of that classification. His wife of 19 years, Wanda, will go back to her waitressing job to make ends meet, while Red is forced to take menial tasks.

As their entire world is flipped upside down these steel workers, Viet Nam vets and night-school dropouts among them, whose jobs were a large part of their identities are forced to cope in a desperate struggle to merely survive when once they had been the epitome of the American dream. The great American truth is that our society is a meritocracy and with hard work will come certain rewards. While there is an element truth to this it has to be recognized that it is not an absolute and there is a dark side of the dream.

Red Baker starts off as a social novel, with broad criticisms of the government and big business. Red writ large as the proletariat hero trying to keep from being squashed by larger economical forces.

But as Red begins his decent into an alcohol and drug fueled madness that directly correlates to his inability to find meaningful work the novel moves from a broader perspective and makes Red more personal. It’s at this point that it really starts to gain a beating heart. His family and those immediately surrounding him are dealt with exclusively. His wife Wanda, whom Red sees as an angry bitter woman. But sifting through Red's perspective it become increasingly clear that she is a devoted wife who will take any job to keep their family solvent and will become, as she always has been, the emotional bedrock that this family’s future will be built on. Money play an important role to be sure in keeping a family together but an emotional bond is as equally important. Ace, Red's son, is good student with musical abilities that want to be fostered. Red and his sons’ relationship may get put through the paces more so then any other. What starts out as a tender father son relationship devolves into one based on fear: fear of the father, fear of the hand, fear of the unknown. Then there is Crystal, a dancer at the bar where the workers congregate. Red is involved with her and has been for awhile. Crystal, in her youthful exuberance, wants to escape the confines of Baltimore and make a better life for herself in Florida, where the weather is warmer and there are more opportunities. She also wants Red to go with her. Throughout most of the novel Crystal represents for Red an escape, a chance to take a deserved ride into the sunset. She becomes a walking example of "The grass is greener..."

The final section of the book can be read as a crime novel. In a final act of desperation Red and Dog get wrangled into pulling a job with a childhood friend. The amount of money is significant enough in their situations for them to act on the opportunity. But the job, as could almost be expected, goes awry.

“There never was a story with a happy ending in Baltimore, but this comes as close to cutting it as any I have heard."

Red Baker is a dream protagonist. His character arc flows organically as he slips further into the hole ever reaching for something true and right that he can use as a handhold or a foothold to start the struggling climb out. He realizes, almost too late, as he is hanging off the cliff's edge by his pinky finger that the light in the darkness was always there and somehow he had managed to over look them, his family. Perhaps that’s the point though, that more important then any fiscal reward are those who love you and who care for you when you are at your lowest. This is not only the greatest reward but the ultimate goal as well.

Homicide by David Simon

Another important Baltimore book. Some would probably argue THE Baltimore book given its extended influence. Whether they know it or not it is the Rosetta stone for fans of Homicide: Life on the Streets and The Wire

Homicide is arguably the best police procedural book ever written. It was an instant classic in every sense of the word and it remains so today. It unflinchingly portrays policing in a big city and strips away every single last notion that we hold about that profession. Never before has such a brutally honest book been written. Even now, 15 years later, it never fails to amaze. Not only did it forever change the landscape but it possesses the singular ability to change your own personal landscape by forever changing your perception of the world. It will ruin just about every other type of story, regardless of medium, that has police in it. It’s important to note that this isn’t a dry recitation of facts, the writing is excellent, the characters are flawed and fleshed out and if anything the story reads like a complex novel.

In 1988, Baltimore Sun reporter David Simon embedded himself for one full year in the Baltimore Homicide Department. He saw it all and reported it without editorializing; he just relayed what he saw. By the end you will understand that the Homicide detective is that rare breed of police.

Here are two examples of the books stone cold sobriety. The first is from David Simon's epilogue from the original edition and displays Simons understated way of telling you something.

"A final postscript: In 1988, 234 men and women died violent deaths in the city of Baltimore. In 1989, 262 people were murdered. Last year, the murder rate jumped again, leaving 305 dead-the cities worst toll in almost 20 years.
In the first month of 1991, the city is averaging one murder a day."

So in other words from the moment that he first started the assignment to the moment the book was published 801 people were murdered with the number quickly climbing.

The second is from a brief afterward that one of the original Detectives wrote for the 2006 trade paperback re-release.

"In the decade and a half since David Simon finished writing this book he has transformed himself from a T-shirt wearing, wet-behind-his-diamond-studded-ear, notebook toting journalist of questionable prowess into an award-winning author, acclaimed screenwriter and accomplished television producer. During that same 15 years, I have advanced exactly one rank."

New header quote and a preview

As good as

"Baltimore's greatest claim to fame is that Divine ate shit on Read Street. Great cities are not known for having somebody eat dog shit. Baltimore will never be great. It's just not going to happen."

--Tom D'Antoni


was as a header quote I know of one that is better. But, admittedly, it is not from a Baltimore native.

Expect reviews soon for Red Baker and Four Kinds of Rain both by Robert Ward as well as Baltimore Noir.

To the Power of Three by Laura Lippman

I mean come its fucking Laura Lippman. The book is set in northern Baltimore County with too many landmarks to name. But is kind of surreal to read about a character on the light rail while actually riding the light rail.

To the Power of Three opens with a letter being written on the eve of a school shooting by the shooter. Before the start of first period the next day a murder will take place behind a locked bathroom door. Three seniors who were life long friends: one will be dead, one will be critically wounded and the other injured. The only living witness and most of the evidence points to one outcome but a few minor pieces of evidence and the professional eye of a veteran murder police point to other possibilities. What really happened in that room? What caused such a breakdown in this supposedly unpenetrable friendship? Is someone lying, if so why?

Since we know the out come of the murder right from the start To the Power of Three establishes itself as a deep character study of the three principle friends, Kat, Josie and Perri. We are taken back to when they first meet, in the third grade, and when all is said and done we will know these three girls as real, three dimensional people, including all of their personality quirks as well as their flaws. Lippman also takes great pains to make sure that we are also intimately aware of those adults and students that surround the three girls. Parents, teachers, guidance councilors, friends, relatives and other students all become fully realized as the portrait of life in affluent Glendale is explored.

Wisely choosing the backgrounds of the three main characters and some of the other students we are treated to an accurate cross section of this area. While the town of Glendale is fictitious, the surrounding areas of the story are not. Given Lippman’s childhood in Columbia and my own firsthand knowledge of this type of setting there is a pervasive feeling of accuracy in her portrayal of the suburban sprawl that encroaches on rural areas bringing with it new found problems. The retreating farmlands, the land developers who buy the farms, the hold out farmers all serve to give us a socio-historical account of not only an ostensibly small portion of Maryland but on a much larger scale other areas of the country where this is happening as well. Some of the most interesting characters are the daughters of the hold out farmers who must contend with their more well to do class mates while they them selves live an existence that they find embarrassing as it becomes an increasingly harder cross to bear. Whereas it’s a given that student A will go to college Student B needs to raise fat hogs to sell at a county fair to add money to the college coffers.

The nuances of female relationships with each other are expertly explored. All of the Mother/Daughter relationships are expressed differently to give a broad portrait of all the possibilities. The viciousness that the girls release on those classmates that are deemed by the group to be inferior goes a long way to show why some people are just not fond of their high school years. Rumors that are started in elementary and middle school haunt some students like ghosts of sins that were never committed. Cruel "pranks" that horrify as you read them if only because you know that things like this really do happen.

As the lives of everyone slowly make their way to the inevitable conclusion the layers of the event as presented to us at the start begin to peel away. By having the murder presented at the start of the novel the ending leaves one feeling strange, when it happens it is detached and unemotional. But that’s the point, because if the identity of the dead girl was withheld until the end then we would be like those students and adults who falsely remember the dead girl and white wash her life, scrubbing away any and all imperfections until only her angelic nature was left, which of course is a lie. Instead Lippman gives us the identity of the dead girl at the start of the book, so when her death occurs we know her for who she truly is, warts and all, as she lived her life.

The conclusion as its presented is never shocking but very intriguing; Lipmann seems to have painted herself into a corner at some point then finds a solution that is plausible and realistic. In the real world cases don’t end with a judicious finality providing closure for all involved. In visual terms this isn’t Cold Case, NYPD Blue or CSI its Homicide and The Wire, things fizzle out, life limps on and the always reliable murder police moves on to the next case because there is always a next case.

The Rising by Brian Keene

Brian Keene (who isnt from Baltimore) proves that the only thing tougher then zombies and heavily armed military men is a tough bitch from Baltimore. The round the way girl here kicks some major ass.

Also there is an extended zombie sequence that takes place in the Baltimore Zoo.



Jim Thurmond is locked in an underground shelter that he built for Y2K, in Virginia. The zombie invasion is already in full swing. His dead pregnant wife is outside pawing on the door and calling his name.

“The dead scrabbled for an entrance to his grave. His wife was among them, as ravenous for Jim in death as she’d been in life. Their faint, soulless cries drifted down through ten feet of soil and rock.


The kerosene lamp cast flickering shadows on the cinder block walls, and the air in the shelter was stale and earthy. His grip on the Ruger tightened. Above him, Carrie shrieked and clawed at the earth.


She’d been dead for a week.”

Going mad and on the verge of suicide Jim gets a call from his son from his first marriage in New York. The boy is trapped in the attic of his house with the dead step-father trying to break the door down. The cell battery dies. Knowing his son is alive rejuvenates him and he vows to escape his bunker and make it to his son to save him. On his way he meets up with an elderly preacher left to defend gods will, an ex-junkie prostitute from Baltimore (including scenes in the Baltimore Zoo), and a scientist who is responsible for the breach that allows the zombies to invade and cross over.

To give you an idea of Keene’s resolve and willingness to go all the way, when Jim escapes the bunker he comes into direct contact with his dead wife. She pulls back her robe and reveals that her belly has been gnawed open by the zombie baby creating a large cavity. He pleads with his wife to stop then is forced to kill both her and the unborn child, whom he finds out only now, is a girl. Keene doesn’t treat such an event lightly; he presents all of the moral difficulties in clear light. Jim’s decision isn’t an easy one, nor should it be, and Keene lets it carry the appropriate weight and importance.

The action kicks off right on the first page and the barrage of action, suspense and adventure never once let up. The Rising is relentless in its assault on the reader. But it’s much more then a catalogue of violent confrontations with the recent dead. Brian Keene is a solid writer with a sharp eye for detail and those quiet moments that make human contact and our relationships real. As the shreds of humanity bond together it’s the strengthening or the exploiting of these bonds that will define the individuals involved and humanity as a whole.

One new twist that Keene adds to the zombie canon, which could very well have turned into a gimmick, was to have animals that were zombies. This could have fallen on its face but Keene shows us very quickly that undead animals are just as scary, if not at times more so, then their (un)human counterparts. This being my first Keene novel I quickly learned to trust in his imagination as he fully explore this idea.

Normally the reason behind the origin of the zombies is biological in nature, but Keene presents us with an enigmatic world where demons (for lack of a better term), that had been banished to a hellish existence on another plane by god, have broken through to our world inhabiting our dead bodies. They indiscriminately kill to provide more vessels for their fallen brethren.

Unlike Romero's plodding zombies Keene's are possessed of a certain level of intelligence. They are fast when need be, or more specifically when the body allows it. They communicate with each other. They can operate motor vehicles, weapons and machinery. All of this escalates the level of tension if not downright claustrophobia when are human protagonists are faced with a legion of zombies. The zombies also retain the memories of the host body which allows for some unsettling moments when a demon is articulating something and the bodies old memories keep interjecting.

There is a larger back story at work here. The zombies are becoming increasingly organized and centrally located in major cities. They also seem to be able to communicate with each other over long distances though it isn’t clear yet if it is some sort of telepathy or if the undead animals act as messengers. Plus the full back story of the demons: their relationship to god and their pure hatred of humans isn’t fully explained yet, with only dark hints being provided.

Without dealing in specifics the ending is abrupt. It just stops in mid action, with no explanation or even an indication that there is a sequel to The Rising called The City of The Dead. I think this bears mentioning because without knowledge of the sequel this would cause many a reader to not like the book regardless of all the goodness that had come before

To wit: a round up of books by, from, about and starring Baltimorons

"Excuse me, is this Homicide." said the rookie carrying a box.

"Homicide...?" the tired red head said with a smirk and a chuckle, "We work for God."



Regardless of genre I will be posting reviews of books that involve Charm City or its residents. As I find them I'll post reviews, if you care to offer any suggestions please feel free to drop me a line.