Cocaine Nights
by J. G. Ballard

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Book Reviews of Cocaine Nights

Book Review: Devilishly charming tale of evil masking as good intentions
Summary: 5 Stars

Bobby Crawford is a handsome and talented tennis instructor who wants to transform the sleepy retirement village of Residencia Costasol, situated on the coast of Spain, into an artistic, theatrically oriented, and civic minded community as a front for a den of drug dealers, pornographers, prostitution, and thieves. Crawford previously did the same for the Spanish resort of Estrella de Mar, home of Club Nautica, managed by Frank Prentice, a Brit recently jailed after he confessed to setting ablaze the home of the elderly and wealthy Mr. and Mrs. Hollinger that snuffed out their lives and those of three other people. Charles Prentice, a travel writer and Frank's older brother, believes in Frank's innocence, despite the latter's repeated protestations to the contrary. Charles goes to Estrella de Mar to investigate the matter.

Charles is slowly sucked into the charming and cunning Bobby Crawford's web of corruption, as are many others in the book. They believe that Crawford is basically a do-gooder, in spite of his penchant for petty and not so petty crimes, to which the police repeatedly turn a blind eye.

I was caught in the grip of this unbelievably suspenseful tale of a later day Sodom and Gomorrah that just never lets up. I could not help comparing the character of Bobby Crawford with that of the late Jim Jones of the Jonestown Massacre infamy. Jim Jones was a handsome, charismatic man of many talents who led his naive followers into the promised land of Guyana. Like Bobby Crawford, a cult of personality formed around Jim Jones, and like Bobby Crawford, Jim Jones was a psychopath. Each man believed he was the Messiah, but it was Jim Jones, if not necessarily Bobby Crawford, who eventually proved to be the Angel of Death.

Let me just say that the climax of _Cocaine Nights_, despite my Bobby Crawford/Jim Jones analogy, is quite unexpected. I do promise that the irony of it will leave your mouth gaping.

Summary of Cocaine Nights

The setting for Cocaine Nights is the Costa del Sol and the stylish resort of Estrella de Mar. Into the queasy beauty of this artificial environment steps Charles Prentice, a travel writer from London who has come to visit his brother Frank, manager of the resort's Club Nautico.

Frank is in jail, having confessed to setting an explosive fire that has taken five lives. Certain that the confession was coerced, Charles launches his own investigation. As he allows himself to be drawn further into Estrella de Mar's dark underworld, this explosive novel accelerates toward a disturbing climax.

Things become clearer as Charles makes the acquaintance of local tennis pro Bobby Crawford, who has some interesting hypotheses about how to maintain the quality of the inner life in the age of affluence. As another of the locals explains, "Leisure societies lie ahead of us, like those you see on this coast. People ... will retire in their late thirties, with fifty years of idleness in front of them.... But how do you energize people, give them some sense of community?" Bobby's succinct answer, provided to Charles in another context: "There's nothing like a violent reflex now and then to tune up the nervous system." Bobby convinces Charles to help him replicate his social experiment in an adjacent retirement community, slowly convincing him that crime and creativity really do go hand in hand. But who, if anybody, takes the responsibility?

Cocaine Nights resonates quite neatly with Ballard's earlier science fiction and experimental stories. As early as The Atrocity Exhibition, Ballard was speculating about the salubrious effects of transgression, and his science fiction novel High Rise also deals with the introduction of violence to a self-contained paradise. Cocaine Nights differs from that earlier work primarily in that it is a naturalistic fiction set in a world that is much more ostensibly real, a world that, with a little less detached theorizing (even at his most natural, it seems, Ballard cannot help but be clinical) on the part of its characters, might even be mistaken for real. --Ron Hogan

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• Mystery, Thriller & Suspense