So I recently read that the best part of a good Noir story
is the inevitability of the characters. You know that gumshoe is going to get
into trouble way over his head. You know that the beautiful woman is only going
to cause trouble. And you know that convict that just came home from prison is
on the fast track back. In a good Noir story there really aren't many
surprises, you know everyone is going to take a fall it’s just a matter of when
and where.
In Volume 5 of
Scalped, the halfway point of the series, we get a look into the past of the
various characters of the series and it has the feeling of a roller coaster slowly
clicking up, up, up until you’re at the peak looking at the fall before you.
And just like a roller-coaster at the peak of its highest drop you finish this
volume with your stomach dropping into your nether regions and your heart in
your throat.
Volume 5 is a split between stories of a Con Man coming to
the Prairie Rose Indian Reservation’s casino to run card counting scams and flashbacks
to a few of the characters pasts. He’s more than happy with hustling blackjack
tables until he sees a drug addled FBI Agent Dashiel Bad Horse and threatens to
expose him as an undercover agent unless he helps him rob the casino. We then
go to a flashback of the life of the other undercover agent on the Rez, Diesel.
We get to look into his early life and how he coped with dealing with people
who refused to accept his mixed ancestry. Next is a look into Agent Nitz’s past
and we get to see how the murder of his two fellow agents on the Rez over 30
years ago has consumed his life and left him filled with nothing but rage and a
desire for revenge. Finally we get a flashback to that faithful day in 1975,
the day that the two FBI agents were murdered on the Rez. We finally get the answer
to the series question of, “Who murdered those two agents and why?” The answer
was a twist I wasn't expecting.
Post by Sam
Twitter: BigSam425
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