The Years With Ross : A cynical romanticism made his political thrillers addictive

Amid all the expected and painful voids Ross Thomas’ death on Dec. 18 created, there is also a small, persistent problem that won’t go away: It simply isn’t possible to get in touch with Ross to chuckle about events surrounding his passing, to share situations that would have caused that familiar smile to spread over his face. For both on the page and in person, no one had such an exact appreciation of the ironies of life.

As someone who treated politics with the bemused disdain of an ex-operative who had “sat in the room where the deals were cut,” Ross would have been tickled to hear about the nurse who assumed that his Christmas card from President and Mrs. Clinton (fans who had told Ross at a White House dinner that they’d read “gazillions” of his books) meant he was a big-time political contributor.

And it would have amused him still more to see his obituary in the national edition of the New York Times, where “Ross Thomas, 69, an Author of Stylish Political Thrillers” exactly split the top of the page with “Virginia McMartin Dies at 88; Figure in Case on Child Abuse.” There is Ross, staring piercingly at McMartin, an unexpected pairing he surely would have appreciated.

In person Ross was unfailingly wise, courteous and razor-sharp, and had so much of the spirit of his books about him that to meet him was to know exactly where they came from. Enormously well-read, he delighted in the life of the mind, in good conversation, in his now-departed cats Manny and Melissa, and in long driving vacations with his wife and boon companion, Rosalie, always curious about what was around the bend.

It’s troublesome that Ross isn’t around to write his own appreciation, because who could do it better? A magician with words, he was a complete craftsman (“I rewrite virtually everything” he explained, “even notes to the guy who delivers the bottled water”) who made the umpteenth draft so fresh and clean it seemed as if no one had worked on it at all. His paragraphs are marvels of wit, economy and surprise, so pleasingly formed that reading just one isn’t possible. To take in, for instance, the opening of”Chinaman’s Chance,” Ross’ best-loved book, is to feel a jolt of exhilaration that the nearly 20 years since it was written have not dimmed at all:

“The pretender to the Emperor’s throne was a fat 37-year-old Chinaman called Artie Wu who always jogged along Malibu Beach right after dawn even in summer, when dawn came round as early as 4:42. It was while jogging alongthe beach just east of the Paradise Cove pier that he tripped over a dead pelican, fell, and met the man with six greyhounds. It was the 16th of June, a Thursday.”

For want of anything better, the graceful, literate and entertaining books Ross wrote were called thrillers. With such a gift for story there was never any need to do plotting in advance. He turned out 25 in 30 years, 20 under his own name and five as Oliver Bleeck when a worried publisher thought he was being a tad too prolific.

He said in an autobiographical essay called “Brown Paper and Some String” that he wrote books of the type that “poke about in the world’s darker corners. I write such novels because I enjoy reading them. Some of them anyway. But then I enjoy reading almost anything that has wit and style and story--and perhaps just a touch of irony.”

And though he might not say it himself, Ross also subscribed to a cynical romanticism of the best sort. Nothing venal or underhanded in the world had a prayer of surprising him, but he never seemed to lose the hope that, as in his books, the best people (even if they were a little suspect around the edges) could and would come out on top.

Although Ross was an impressive and consistent seller all around the world (I’ve come across stacks of his books in Paris; Tokyo; Budapest, Hungary; and Prague, Czech Republic), his fans were forever hoping to really get him over, to turn him into one of those whopping best-selling authors whose books sold by the carload.

Despite spectacular reviews (Stephen King described him as “the Jane Austen of the political espionage story”), this never happened. And though he wryly wrote that having both Eric Ambler and John D. MacDonald list him as the most neglected author in a Times Literary Supplement survey was “more neglect than I really cared for,” his never becoming a household word did not surprise him. “One swallow,” he’d say when someone would call to congratulate him on a commercially potent review, “does not a spring make.” Yet every one of his 25 books is currently in print, a considerable accomplishment in these backlist-less days.

When MacDonald, a writer he greatly admired, died in 1986, Ross wrote words that might as easily apply to himself:

MacDonald “was the absolute master of his craft. His gaze was steady and he understood completely what he saw. What’s more, he was able to transmit this profound understanding to the page in some of the most graceful and illuminating prose of our time.

“MacDonald was a very good, even superb popular writer whose books sold very well. His death will create a very large literary void.” The loss of Ross Thomas, clearly, can do no less.

PEN Center USA/West will sponsor a celebration of Ross Thomas and his writings on Feb. 10 at 3 p.m. in the Mark Taper Auditorium of the Los Angeles Public Library’s Central Library, 630 W. 5th St., Los Angeles. Information: (213) 365-8500.