Fail Safe by Willard Thurston
A photographer with a limp and progressive hearing loss. A lithe actress who lands a plum role in an art film. The sometimes drug dealer, sometimes porn producer, recently sworn jihadist whose history links the two together.
These are just three of the dozens of fascinating and complex characters that populate Willard Thurston’s illustrated novel Fail Safe, a sprawling tale of the film industry, where high art meets shadowy funding and glamour belies the seedy underpinnings of drug dealers, art forgers, street gangs, cultural manipulators and more.
INTERSECTING THREADS LINK CHARACTERS
When actress Tara Quin lands a role in Moon Disk, a film based on the Aztec myth of the murder and dismemberment of Coyolxauhqui by her brother Huitzilopochtli, she believes she is starting a new life. On the run from a drug gang in her hometown, she is dismayed to discover her ex-boyfriend, Ryan Dyke, visiting the set. The very person who prompted the gang to shake her down for some money she was supposedly holding for Ryan, who had left town abruptly.
It is only when the brilliant and cultured crime family boss and film backer Alejandra Belmonte offers Tara protection that the young actress feels safe to resume filming. As a side project, Alejandra hires Tara as a model for a fashion shoot, where she meets our story’s main protagonist, Mason Bascule, photographer and sometime uni pal of her ex-boyfriend, Ryan. The attraction is immediately apparent, and the two embark on a deepening bond of love and companionship.
Tara’s troubles do not end there, though. And this aspect of the story is just one of many threads that include the attempted murder of an Irish folk singer during the Vancouver Stanley Cup riot, the gang-related killing of another of Mason’s friends in a terrifying case of mistaken identity, and a disastrous desert film shoot that ends in another gory and undeserved murder. Criminals of every stripe intersect throughout — not only the aforementioned street gangs and crime families, but also terrorist cells and even the IRA.
What all the mayhem has in common, however, has to do with the “toxic” presence, influence and actions of Ryan Dyke. And the murders are just a few of the causality ripples that define the plot of Fail Safe.
ILLUSTRATIONS ADD STUNNING DEPTH AND REALISM
A former commercial illustrator, Thurston’s accompanying images are stunning in their realism. A composite of photographs, collages and painstaking hand-drawn details, these lend an “uncanny valley” quality — perhaps a nod to the artifice that pervades the film industry and fashion modeling. Thurston is indeed a talented multimedia artist in his own right.
It is also worth noting that Thurston introduces several minor characters in this novel who then turn up as major ones in What Made Thee (read our review here). Others reappear yet again in Thurston’s Apsara (stay tuned for our review). What is clear is that Thurston is creating, exploring and charting a universe of his own design.
It’s one where connections between people and events are ever-evolving, where art and prurience cohabit, and where witty wordplay and intellectual subject matter abound.
This is a pre-publication review; meanwhile, learn more about the author on his website.
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About Willard Thurston:
Willard Thurston lives in British Columbia. One of the Sixties “floaters” … eventually a photographer and printer (retail advertising), illustrator and writer. He holds a degree in English and Early European History from the University of British Columbia.
