“The Role of a Lifetime”: A Review of El Flamingo, by Nick Davies

 

 (New York: YBK Publishers, 2023). ISBN: 978-1-936411-84-9

While I cannot say it’s the same for everyone, I have found, in five and a half decades on Earth, that my most profound and valuable experiences in life are rarely about what I thought they’d be about. Perhaps that is why the maxim the journey is its own reward is so powerful for me.

Lest I get to feeling too lonely in this philosophy, Nick Davies’s El Flamingo—in addition to being one of the strongest, most perfectly plotted novels I have read in several years—feels like a case in point.

Lou Galloway, a frustrated actor whose Hollywood career isn’t very Hollywood and not much of a career, decides to leave it all behind and go to Mexico to lose himself and get past his most recent almost-but-not-quite Big Break in copious amounts of tequila, sea, and sand. After arriving in “Playa del something-or-other,” he is promptly pulled into an international intrigue that takes him to Columbia, where all of his considerable acting skills are called upon to possibly save a country, if not a continent. 

Hold on, you might be thinking—isn’t that a trope? After all, it’s kind of what Nicholas Cage just did in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.

Well, okay… Maybe it is a little. And I happen to love that film, as I do a much older one, starring Tom Hanks, called The Man with One Red Shoe.

But remember… All of these projects are squarely situated in one of only two types of stories a writer can tell: Boy Meets Girl and Stranger in a Strange Land/Fish Out of Water.

And, in reality, most stories (El Flamingo included) are a combination of both.   

What sets this novel (which could easily become a film) apart, and makes it more than worth your time, is that the tropes are beautifully integrated and rendered unique in the carefully crafted world of international intrigue that Davies has created. At times, it is the Godfather. At others, it’ every rogue CIA assassin film ever. At others, it’s borderline Spaghetti Western. But it’s always, in the end, the tale of a frustrated actor who gets the role of a lifetime in the most unexpected of ways.

I want to be careful not to give anything away in terms of more specific plot points. In terms of the Hero’s Journey, however, Lou answers the call to adventure without too much hesitation. After all, he has suffered endless disappointment and has very little to lose, so this all-in attitude makes sense. As the old maxim warns us, those with nothing to lose are the most unpredictable and therefore most dangerous people of all.

As Lou leaves the Ordinary World (sort of a nested one, since leaving LA to go to Mexico was already a major shift for him), he dons a costume, and starts building his new persona—El Flamingo, an internationally known and feared assassin who has managed to keep anyone from seeing his face for decades.

Oh what a tantalizing web of familiar and unique our talented author weaves.

In this increasingly delicious and spicy story stew, Davies has all the right ingredients: a vicious Columbian crime lord; his beautiful, sexy wife; an altruistic politician caught in the crosshairs; and the requisite plethora of stock characters in support, including a desperate third-rate Hollywood agent who is much more interesting than the one in Unbearable Weight or McConaughey’s Rick Peck in Tropic Thunder.

We are pretty sure we know what’s going to happen—and we want it to! That’s the special spell that genre tales deliver.

Not to fear—Lou’s background as an actor (and how he continually and believably applies it to his ever-evolving circumstances) is the specific spice that gives El Flamingo a leg up on other entries in this genre. Where Unbearable Weight gets its artistic heft from the study of screenplay story structure, a la workshop staples Robert McKee and Syd Field, El Flamingo illuminates the actor’s complicated skillset. Far beyond tired terms like “motivation” (as in, What’s my…?) and “stakes,” Davies’s insights into acting will be a clinic for those who practice the craft and a value-added aspect of the novel for those who don’t. Constantin Stanislavski­­—actor, teacher, director, and author of Building a Character and An Actor Prepares—would approve. The key to success for El Flamingo is that the tools of the actor are integrated flawlessly into the plot. While the pacing is overall perfect, this integration of what could be simply a gimmick in the hands of a lesser writer is part of an impressive character arc for Lou.

Davies also does a masterful job of implanting the end in the beginning, to a degree I have rarely seen. Not only does he pay his IOUs to the audience, he reinforces the themes through strategic repetition, ensuring a satisfying payoff. The crucial bookend scenes mirror one another closely. In general, no character is wasted, no turn of phrase or passage of dialogue is simple filler or a “look how clever I am” statement by the writer—it all works together and comes together in the end. A tip to beginning (and even veteran) writers: symmetry, repetition, compelling characters, and well-structured circumstances give you all the room you need to be fantastical, to push the reality-boundaries and have the audience willingly take the ride.

If you’re smart, you’ll read El Flamingo and take copious notes on how it’s done.

Taking place in Mexico and Columbia, there is considerable use of Spanish. Davies clearly trusts his audience to take meaning from both common words and phrases and context and where the Spanish is beyond those mechanisms, he seamlessly gives us translations. If you are familiar with the novels of Cormac McCarthy, you will understand. You can tell Davies knows of what he writes—culturally, geographically, and linguistically.

As one would expect, El Flamingo ends on a cliffhanger, signaling a sequel.

I honestly cannot wait.