Book review: Joe Ide’s IQ brings Californian crime fiction to the 21st-century

It is not spoiling anything to suggest IQ feels set up to be the first in a series, much like that featuring author Joe Ide’s hero, Sherlock Holmes.

IQ by Joe Ide. Courtesy Curtis Brown

When he was growing up in South Central Los Angeles, Japanese-American author Joe Ide's favourite stories were from Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes series. It's a long way from California to Baker Street, so for his debut, Ide has brought Sherlock Holmes to the mean streets of East Long Beach, in the guise of charismatic loner and unlicensed detective Isaiah Quintabe. IQ. Get it?

For all Quintabe uses familiarly Sherlock-style quick-witted powers of logic and deduction to solve – or prevent – crimes, Ide quickly sets up a world distinct and engrossing enough for this to be more than pure homage.

From the first chapter, in which Quintabe only needs a whiff of chloroform to work out that a man "missing a white tooth and shiny with sunburn" has kidnapped a girl – and chases him to a brilliantly explosive climax – IQ feels like a combination of an entertaining TV crime drama, page-turning thriller and, on occasion, social commentary.

It is pushing it to suggest IQ is a companion piece to fellow Californian Paul Beatty's Booker Prize-winning satire, The Sellout.

It is too bound by genre convention for that. But it is promising that new crime fiction of this standard can come out of this community. Even if James Ellroy's LA Confidential or Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep remain by some distance the gold standard for Californian crime fiction, IQ is a 21st-century tale for mainstream, modern audiences.

The main case in IQ is about a rap mogul in mortal danger from someone with a grudge. Naturally, the supporting cast are not exactly people anyone would want to spend time with: there is a psychopathic hitman and, in a slightly ham-fisted nod to The Hound of the Baskervilles, a huge attack dog. Quintabe navigates the clues to the killer's identity with sharp wit, intelligence and not a little energy.

In short, he is fun to be around, even if the world he inhabits certainly isn’t.

It is not spoiling anything to suggest IQ feels set up to be the first in a series, much like that featuring Ide's hero, Sherlock Holmes.

If that sounds a little too strategic, then at least Quintabe’s back story reveals a character with genuine depth.

[e-mail]