Two weeks ago, after a long day of pre-semester meetings at my college, I headed to a library in Gurnee (the town next to mine) with my sister to hear Nick Petrie talk with another author, Lori Rader-Day, about his newly released novel, Tear It Down. The book is the fourth in a series about Peter Ash, a military veteran with a persistent case of PTSD and an uncanny ability to attract trouble.
The conversation wandered in many interesting directions, including a discussion of series books versus standalones, and I learned more about the origins of Peter Ash in general and the writing of Tear It Down in particular. Petrie (like the dish) lives in Milwaukee and Rader-Day lives in the Chicago suburbs so the evening felt like a nice way to get to know and support local/regional authors and I would have happily sat and listened to another two-hours-worth of stories.
After all that, I was eager to get to my signed copy of Tear It Down and find out what trouble Peter Ash was going to get into in Memphis. I was not disappointed. One of the things that I appreciate about Petrie’s series, the first being The Drifter, is that Peter is evolving over the course of the books. Not changing completely but rather slowly getting a handle on the “white static” he feels in enclosed spaces and developing a closer relationship with the feisty June Cassidy but also realizing that there are some aspects to his new post-war personality that he won’t ever be able to leave behind. The fact that June recognizes this too is part of what sets the plot of Tear It Down in motion.
Sensing Peter’s growing restlessness, June sends him to Memphis to help out her friend, Wanda Wyatt, a photojournalist who has worked in a number of war zones but is now taking pictures in inner-city Memphis and preparing for a big art show in New York. Wanda recently bought and moved into a historic but run-down building and has been getting death threats. Not long before Peter arrives, the threats turn into action when somebody drives a huge dump truck into the front of Wanda’s building. This situation calls for Peter to act as contractor and sleuth as he sets out to help repair the building (or figure out if it’s worth repairing) and figure out who has it in for Wanda and why.
However, this isn’t just Peter’s story. It’s the story of Eli Bell, a fifteen-year-old African-American street kid and musician, living in Memphis without any family and whose friends coerce him into taking part in a robbery. At first, it seems the jewelry store in a suburban mall is easy pickings, but when the job goes horribly wrong, Eli finds himself on the run both from the police and a powerful drug lord.
It’s also the story of Albert Burkitts, a middle-aged white man who in an attempt to hang onto the family farm, has turned to running a wild hog butchering business. His body is falling apart after years of labor and one bad farming accident, and he finds himself needing more and more pain pills to make it through the day. He also realizes he can no longer control his younger brother, Judah Lee, recently released from prison and in full-on white supremacist mode. Judah Lee is becoming dangerously fixated on recovering the family fortune, which lore has it was hidden in a house in Memphis before the Civil War.
Seeing how all these characters come together is part of what makes this novel so powerful and addictive. Once again, Peter calls on his friend, Lewis, for back up. In the tradition of Spenser’s Hawk or Myron Bolitar’s Win, Lewis comes with a “particular set of skills.” However, as has been hinted at all along, Lewis’s backstory does not just involve the streets of Milwaukee, and that idea is developed a bit further here. The dynamics between Peter and Lewis are a joy to read—both witty banter and real understanding—and the racial issues that arise in this novel only deepen their relationship.
Petrie creates a cast of characters that feel real—both ones you want to get to know better and others you would cross the street (or the country) to avoid. However, he also sets this novel in a Memphis that is not all Elvis and Sun Studio and I appreciate that. At this point, I will pretty much follow Peter Ash wherever he goes, but this novel is a trip I would recommend to anyone.