From Hippie to Hip : ...

After years of writing and producing TV cop shows such as “Hill Street Blues” and “Miami Vice,” novelist Robert Ward at last has done the seemingly obvious. He has written a hardcover cop thriller set mainly in star-crossed Los Angeles. Yet despite his Hollywood record, this fifth novel represents a big literary shift for Ward, who in previous books has gotten no closer to Tinseltown--in almost any sense--than Big Sur. In fact, his chief locale until now has been lower-middle-class Baltimore, where modest dreams crack like crab shells, and booze, drugs, crime and sports chatter fill the blue-collar void.

Geography is one of the simpler ways to distinguish between “The Cactus Garden” and three earlier novels, spanning more than 20 years, that are being simultaneously reissued. (A fourth, “Cattle Annie and Little Britches”--produced as a movie of the same title--is missing from the set.) “The Cactus Garden” is less introspective and moody than its predecessors. It also meanders through its overtly cinematic scenes and a high-energy plot distilled from murder, heroin, revenge, gambling, true love and the hero’s phobia of desert succulents. The publisher clearly believes that by embracing a popular genre Ward can attract a wider reading audience and reignite interest in his highly praised earlier work.

Based on the evidence, there is no reason why both can’t happen. “The Cactus Garden” is a strong entry in its class, a page-turner that delivers expert narrative and some memorable characters. Not least among them is Buddy Wingate, an Arkansas-bred furniture magnate turned low-rent film producer/drug dealer who yearns for the day fellow Razorback Bill Clinton will invite him to the White House.

By the current rules of thrillerdom, “The Cactus Garden” delivers the requisite amount of whiplash action from the opening pages. Ward no sooner introduces federal Drug Enforcement Administration agent Jack Walker and his partner C.T. Jefferson than he drop-kicks them into a carjacking on scenic Hollywood Boulevard.

In the process of rescuing small-time actress Charlotte Rae Wingate from the pistol-pointing thief, Walker does heavy damage to Mann’s Chinese Theater and breaks a couple of his own ribs. The pain is worth it, however, because Walker earns Charlotte Rae’s trust. Walker has been tailing the formidably endowed Charlotte because the DEA wants to bust both her and her husband, Buddy, as drug dealers. So the shining-knight act gives Walker the ideal pretext for penetrating the Wingate operation. And, yep, the hormonal synergy between Walker and Charlotte Rae is too much to resist. Or so it seems. . . .

What follows is a tale that blends tried-and-true elements--multiple treacheries, bureaucratic timidity, brash young cop against the system--with more innovative embellishments, for example, a Colombian drug lord who moonlights as a shaman, and a Borgia-style poisoning that is mesmerizing in its cleverness and cruelty.

Ward does not spare show business, either. Almost in passing he satirizes the lowlife aspects of the movies. In between drug deals, Buddy Wingate is producing a sleaze epic about a U.S. President who happens to be a serial killer.

Although set mainly on the seamy side of Southern California, “The Cactus Garden” wanders across the Southwest and into Mexico, following never-ending drug trails from cities to villages to gambling meccas. The constant changes of scene, multiple narrow escapes and continual sharp banter among the characters help give the novel its wired, hip quality.

Ward’s three other novels, by contrast, are exercises in sedateness. “Shedding Skin,” “Red Baker” and “The King of Cards” certainly have their frenetic moments. But each is almost plotless and depends upon its characters for momentum. All three novels are about intellectual and emotional journeys through the claustrophobia of Baltimore with its row houses, neighborhood bars, troubled marriages and embattled working stiffs. The city of Baltimore, where Ward grew up, figures as a character in its own right because of its residents’ ambivalence about the place and because Ward seems to know every brick and sewer grate.

In what is arguably Ward’s best book, laid-off steelworker Red Baker grapples clumsily with the loss of his job and the city’s changing economy. Spiraling down into drugs and booze, he yearns for the city of his youth, a town where his buddies were confident and secure, and steady work was always at hand. Near the end of the 1985 novel, Baker has a sort of epiphany about Baltimore as he rides the bus home from his janitor’s chores: “I saw that the city had been pushing me and my friends all along, and we had been so caught up in just staying alive, that we had never once pushed back.”

Although set in the early 1980s, “Red Baker” still resonates more than a decade later, since the loss of jobs to foreign competition remains a daily theme in national life. Painful, raw and bleak, “Red Baker” is a “Grapes of Wrath” for this downsized age.

Ward’s other two novels are less universal. Though two decades separate his first novel, “Shedding Skin” (1972), and “The King of Cards” (1993), the books are eerily alike. Both are takes on the ‘60s and take as main characters young men in search of themselves, drawn to the hippie scene and eventually chastened by its excesses.

The autobiographical “Shedding Skin” follows a character named Bobby Ward from grade school in Baltimore to the drug-addled streets of San Francisco at the peak of the Haight-Ashbury phenomenon. Reading it today is like taking a time trip to nearly 30 years ago, to the Summer of Love. Ward reproduces the lingo, especially the mindless, mystical good vibes and macrobiotic raps, with astonishing fidelity. Read “Shedding Skin” and you will never again be nostalgic for that sad and violent decade.

“The King of Cards” treads much the same ground but never leaves Baltimore. This time around the result is more accessible, the ‘60s filtered through middle-aged hindsight. The narrator is more discreetly named Tommy Fallon, who from the perspective of middle age chronicles his adventures with a band of home-grown Merry Pranksters. Fallon’s tale begins when he leaves the home of his feuding parents and rents a room in a house that is part commune, part business enterprise, headed by a Ken Kesey-like figure. Multiple adventures follow, some hilarious, some brutal, some sad. It is not giving too much away to say that everything finally falls apart.

“The King of Cards” is annoying and sometimes brilliant. As in “Shedding Skin,” the narrator wallows in the self-obsession that is the cherished privilege of young adults. Still, the book contains masterful scenes, and Ward’s smooth, almost flawless prose makes up for a lot, including his predilection for dramatically convenient dream scenes stuffed with heavy-handed symbolism.

Fortunately, these are minor complaints. The bottom line is that both Ward and his audience are lucky to have so much of his work reissued in one grand salvo.