Navigating his way between hostile patrons and brutal fellow workers, African American caddy Train finds an ally in a police detective who encourages Train's ambitions and oversees a case involving a boat hijacking and a beautiful widow. - (Baker & Taylor)

Quietly navigating his way between his hostile patrons and brutal fellow workers, African-American caddy Train finds an unexpected ally in a police detective who encourages Train's ambitions and oversees a case involving a boat hijacking and a beautiful widow. - (Baker & Taylor)

Los Angeles, 1953. Lionel Walk is a young black caddy at Brookline, the oldest, most exclusive country club in the city, where he is known by the nickname "Train." A troubled, keenly intelligent kid with no particular interest in his own prodigious talent for the game, he keeps his head down and his mouth shut as he navigates his way between the careless hostility of his "totes" and the explosive brutality of the other caddies.
Miller Packard, a sergeant with the San Diego police department, first appears on the boy's horizon as a distracted gambler, bored with ordinary risks. Train names him the "Mile-Away Man" as they walk off the first tee, and even months later, when they have become partners of a sort and are winning high-stakes matches against golf hustlers all over the country, the Mile-Away Man is a puzzle to Train, remote and intimate, impulsive and thoughtful, often all at the same time.
Packard is also a puzzle to Norah Still, the beautiful lone survivor of a terrifying yacht hijacking, who is both aroused and repulsed by his violent and detached manner at the crime scene. Packard himself feels no such ambiguity. He is unequivocally drawn to Norah - and perhaps to what has happened to her - and an odd, volatile triangle takes shape, Packard pulling the other two relentlessly into deeper water, away from what is safe. - (Blackwell North Amer)

Los Angeles, 1953. Lionel Walk is a young black caddy at Brookline, the oldest, most exclusive country club in the city, where he is known by the nickname “Train.” A troubled, keenly intelligent kid with no particular interest in his own prodigious talent for the game, he keeps his head down and his mouth shut as he navigates his way between the careless hostility of his “totes” and the explosive brutality of the other caddies.

Miller Packard, a sergeant with the San Diego police department, first appears on the boy’s horizon as a distracted gambler, bored with ordinary risks. Train names him the “Mile-Away Man” as they walk off the first tee, and even months later, when they have become partners of a sort and are winning high-stakes matches against golf hustlers all over the country, the Mile-Away Man is a puzzle to Train, remote and intimate, impulsive and thoughtful, often all at the same time.

Packard is also a puzzle to Norah Still, the beautiful lone survivor of a terrifying yacht hijacking, who is both aroused and repulsed by his violent and detached manner at the crime scene. Packard himself feels no such ambiguity. He is unequivocally drawn to Norah – and perhaps to what has happened to her – and an odd, volatile triangle takes shape, Packard pulling the other two relentlessly into deeper water, away from what is safe.

With his trademark economy of style, Dexter brings these characters to life in their most reckless, vulnerable moments, stripping away words and manners until all that is left is the basic human pulse. - (Random House, Inc.)

PETE DEXTER is the author of the National Book Award winner Paris Trout and of God’s Pocket, Deadwood, Brotherly Love, and The Paperboy. He was born in Michigan and raised in Georgia, Illinois, and eastern South Dakota. He lives in Puget Sound, Washington.

Booklist Reviews

Golf and the noir novel--strange bedfellows on the surface, but maybe not so strange, after all. "Disappointment was the only thing about the game that lasted." So says Lionel "Train" Walk, a young black caddy at an exclusive L.A. country club in 1953. Train is a self-taught golfer, too, and his natural ability catches the eye of an enigmatic cop, Miller Packard (or "Mile-Away Man," as Train dubs him). As the stories of Train, Packard, and Norah Still, the survivor of a yacht hijacking (and eventually, Packard's wife), interject and ultimately implode, Dexter painstakingly reminds us that noir is all about disappointment, too. Packard seems like a savior at first, nursing Norah back to psychic and sexual health and backing Train in a series of high-stakes golf matches, but is the Mile-Away Man really a quiet agent of chaos, carefully arranging the pieces of his electric train on a collision course? In the best noir tradition, Dexter isn't saying one way or the other, but he makes us flinch as we wait for the inevitable smash-up. Along the way, there are pleasures aplenty: superbly rendered characters, every detail just right, especially in the Of Mice and Men-like relationship between Train and Plural, a blind fighter whom he attempts to keep from harm. And, perhaps best of all, there's the golf: fitting naturally into its noir context, never sentimentalized but offering the novel's doomed characters the occasional moment of purity on the road to disappointment. ((Reviewed July 2003)) Copyright 2003 Booklist Reviews