River Runs Red

Hess (The Butcher’s Sons) sets this modest and underwhelming historical in late-19th-century St. Louis. Calhoun McBride, a destitute 16-year-old orphan, resorts to selling his body. Clement Cartwright, an architect returning to his hometown from Chicago to build the Landsworth, St. Louis’s first skyscraper, finds him irresistible. The two soon meet by the river for a naked swim and sex. The city’s richest man, snooty, cocaine-addled brewery heir Belasco Snopes, wants part ownership of the Landsworth as well as Cartwright’s next project, a fancy hotel. When he’s offered only a small investor’s stake, he takes it as a sign that Cartwright “means to conquer St. Louis.” Snopes discovers Cartwright and McBride are lovers and uses that—as well as an altercation he has with McBride, which leads to McBride being accused of attempting to murder Snopes—to try to bring Cartwright down. Hess is artful with some details, but his characters are one-dimensional. Snopes would twirl his mustache if he had one; his motivations for evil are facile. The relationship between McBride and Cartwright is underdeveloped. A fourth major character, widow Dolores Brattridge, is superfluous. Only McBride’s lengthy set-piece trial for attempted murder is fully realized, making points about class, race, sexuality, and greed. For the most part, this intermittently engaging novel disappoints. (Nov.)