CHAPTER ONE
We meet Brew(not even his enemies calls him Mick!) siting in a bar, the Hegira, contemplating life and the existing moment. We come to understand he has been drinking fo a couple of days. He is in a state of mind that looking into a glass of amber-coloured alcohol promises paradise, a paradise only alcoholics can fathom and is rarely encounterd even by such a person. It is night. This peaceful and quiet moment is destroyed when Ginny enters the bar. Everything stops. This is a bar she never enters and not in this fashion. No definitely not this way. She destroys his moment of bliss coming looking for him. The moment Brew takes the glass to his mouth to drink she stops his hand and gets his attention. She tells him that his niece is missing, Alathea, his dead brothers daughter. Brew's mind goes kind of blank and they leave the bar.
Well, this is in short what happens, it doesn't look much, but the chapter is short, very short, only six pages. And the place where everything is happening is inside Brew's head. It is written totally from his POV, and we are there, in his mind, sharing his thoughts, following his line of thinking, his description of the surroundings, the bar, it's people, the light. All this creates an atmosphere that is very noirish , a great opening chapter to this whole series. Look here...this begins the book...
This is the bliss of alcohol. So seductive, and in comes Ginny and destroys it all...I was sitting at the bar of the Hegira when Ginny came in. The barkeep, an ancient sad-eyed patriarch named José, hasd just poured me another drink, and I was having one of those rare moments any serious drunk can tell you about. Apiece of real quiet. José's cheeks bristled because he didn't shave very often, and his apron was dingy because it didn't get washed very often, and his fingernails had littele crescents of grime under them. The glass he poured for me wasn't all that clean. But the stuff he poured was golden-amber and beautiful, like distilled sunlight, and it made the whole place soothing as sleep-which drunks now how to value because they don't get much of it.
It made the dull old fly-brown santos against the wall behind the bootles look like saints knew what they were doing and it made the drinkers at the tables look peaceful and happy. It made the men playing pool in the back of the room look like they were moving in slow-motion, flowing through the air as if it were syrup. It made José look wise and patient behind his stubble and his groggy eyes. It was one of those rare moments when everything is in the right place, and there's a soft gold light shining on it, and you feel like you're being healed. It never lasts-but you always think it will, if you just stay where you are and don't stop drinking.
As I said, not much happen but in Brew's mind. But what this do is give charachter. We follow Brew's meandering thoughts on how and why he drinks, when Ginny enters we are given her history and her looks and we understand that he is attracted to her but dare not do anything about it (yet). In digressions he tells us about Puerta del Sol, the city where this story takes place how it looks, where the rich and poor lives and so on. In between things that are happening a lot is told to us...
It is as noir it can get, some would certainly call it hardboiled, I do...I had the right to be surprised. For one thing, she had no bussiness walking into the Hegira like that-especially at night. The Hegira is down in the old part of puerta del Sol, on Eighth Street between Oak and Maple. Cities are like that : The old parts-where the descendants and countrymen of the founders live-have street names like"Eight" and "Oak". The rich suburbs-half of them built in the last ten years-have flashier names like "Tenochtitlán" and "Montezuma". And in the old part of town women don't go into bars at all. When the chicano and Mestizo and Indian women want their men to come out, they stand on the sidewalk and send in their children.
I think I'll stop here. I could go on quoting paragraph after paragraph but hope I have left material to continue the discussion from..."Good damn it, Brew"-she had one of those voices thatcan do anything, melt in your mouth or tear the skin off your bones-"you're going to come with me or I'll swear to God I'll let you have it right here." At the moment she sounded like a pistol being whipped. She didn't shout-she didn't have to. When she used that tone on me, there was no question about which one of us was in charge.
kasten
) street's bridge that spans the railroad yard on it's way to into downtown and then to oldtown. It's also the type of bar that women never enter and slightly an eyebrow is raised if someone gets shot at. Ginny's a tough babe and Mick's a big dude! Amber glows like that can come from Jack Daniels too... 
