MISS OCTOBER VOLUME 4

"A COP AND A GENTLEMAN"
Writer: Stephen Desberg | Artist: Alain Queireix | Colorist: Kattrin

You may recall that when I looked at MISS OCTOBER book one a few weeks back, I noted that the opening scene was set at UCLA in 1963, as Viktor attempted to steal some artwork but triggered an alarm and was cornered outside by Detective Clegg Jordan. The action then jumped back two years to 1961, which is where we spent the bulk of book one, as well as all of books two and three. Well, book four opens on that night in 1963 once more, as Clegg lets Viktor go just before Ariel and several officers show up. Clegg then places Ariel under arrest for... the murder of Clegg's own wife, Margeaux! And with that, we're off and running into the final MISS OCTOBER installment.

We learn, in short order via flashbacks and exposition, that four months ago, Margeaux called Ariel, begging to see him again. They met and got it on, and then a photographer burst into the room and snapped several photos of the pair in coitus. Margeaux didn't really want Ariel back; she wanted to humuliate and blackmail him for the way he had treated her. It is based on this that Clegg arrests Ariel, but the LAPD chief knows the evidence is flimsy -- but, hating Ariel nearly as much as Clegg does, he gives Clegg one week to find concrete proof.

Meanwhile, during the four months since Margeaux's murder, Viktor and Clegg have been carrying on an affair. Clegg wants to marry her, but Juanita, who has carried a torch for Clegg for a long time, finds out that Clegg is in love with Viktor. Knowing about Viktor's secret life as a thief, Juanita makes plans to frame her -- but Clegg finds out. And this is where the story, which seemed more-or-less neatly wrapped up in the previous volume, takes some very dramatic turns as it careens toward its conclusion. The paparazzo who snapped shots of Ariel and Margeaux in bed togethr also snaps a picture of Viktor when she returns to the museum to complete her robbery. Ariel finds out and he and his cronies go after the photographer -- but Viktor tells Clegg that she was captured on film, and Clegg finds the guy first. He takes him to a motel for safekeeping, but Ariel and his men, following Clegg, enter the room as soon as Clegg leaves. When Clegg goes back inside, he finds Ariel standing over the photographer's dead body. Clegg arrests Ariel for killing both his wife and the man who took photos of them in bed together.

Meanwhile, Clegg finds Juanita in the act of preparing her frame against Viktor, and kills her. Elsewhere, Ariel and his detectives all claim that the photographer was dead when the entered the motel room. And when Viktor begins to suspect Clegg of getting rid of Juanita, he confesses to her that he set it all up. In order to be with Viktor, he killed Margeaux and then arranged her meeting with Ariel, for which he had a lookalike hooker meet the detective. Never one to turn down a tryst, Ariel went ahead and got it on with the woman even though she wasn't Margeaux. The photographer snapped the pictures, and the rest is history.

But Viktor had gone to the police before confronting Clegg, and since he had to write out his whole story for his deaf lover, she turns the notes over to the cops. The chief hands Clegg a gun and tells him he's going to die in an "accident". His young daugther will get his pension, and Ariel will still go to prison for the crimes he didn't commit. We don't actually see what happens to Clegg at this point, but it's pretty clear he takes the offer. He really has no other choice.

The story ends with Viktor leaving the city to find a new place to become a burglar.

And that's it! Like I said last week, I really wasn't sure where this fourth book would go, since the "Playmate Murder" case was wrapped up pretty neatly. I wasn't sure if there would be some twist revealing that Viktor's friend Lana wasn't the killer after all (which would be essentially impossible) or that she wasn't working alone, or what. But instead, this volume moves completeley beyond that case, showing us the fall of its hero, Clegg Jordan. Clegg was never a saint, doing some questionable things in the line of duty and frequently cheating on his wife, but to see the depths to which he sinks here is nonetheless startling. Whle not the protagonist of this story (that's Viktor), he was basically its hero through the first three books. And then, suddenly, he's the bad guy: killing his wife, killing an innocent (if somewhat sleazy) photographer, framing a fellow officer for the murders (even if that office is an A-hole), and also, in a brief scene I didn't mention above, preparing to blackmail Viktor's father into letting him marry her after he steals Ariel's file on Viktor (remember, Ariel was lead detective on the "cat burglar" case, and though we didn't see it mentioned in the prior books, Viktor was apparently his chief suspect).

I raved about the artwork a couple times previously, but I'll just mention again how beautiful it is, and how brilliantly Alain Queireix captures the styles and setting of the early sixties. When you combine that art with a tense, thrilling story from Stephen Desberg, it's impossible for this tale to be anything less than magnificent. I really, really liked MISS OCTOBER all the way through (and I would still love to see a motion picture version -- it's perfect fodder for such an adaptation). This one is highly recommended!