David Dodge is a colorful writer whose fiction and non-fiction often ranges from country to country, but in 1950’s The Red Tassel, third and last in his Al Colby series after The Long Escape and Plunder of the Sun, he confines his story mainly to a mining village in the high Andes of Bolivia. A woman named Pancha Porter has inherited a mine and hired Colby to find out why it’s failing. Villagers think a local mystic has laid a curse, but Colby isn’t particularly credulous when it comes to witch doctoring. There’s been sabotage, and his experience tells him that in such cases only mundane reasons like money or revenge can be behind it.
In telling this story, Dodge avoids most of the worst excesses writers commit portraying indigenous cultures, and makes his confined, almost claustrophobic narrative, with its cramped tunnels and taciturn Indians, work extremely well. His characters are diverse in motivation and temperament, and the conspiracy he weaves is easy to believe. His next novel would be To Catch a Thief, so The Red Tassel pales by comparison, but just the same it’s good. Dodge always gets you hither and yon with alacrity. The Red Tassel is engrossing, educational, occasionally amusing, and quite thrilling.
