Double Wide - Leo W. Banks

Double Wide by Leo W. Banks is both the author’s debut novel (2017) and the first book in his two-book Whip Stark series. Banks has also been a correspondent for several newspapers and has written articles for magazines such as Sports Illustrated, National Review, and The Los Angeles Times Magazine. In addition, Banks is a regular columnist for True West magazine and has authored four books on Old West history. 

Whip (Prospero) Stark, the main character of Double Wide, is a young man with an interesting personal history. Stark is a superior athlete who just a few years earlier possessed the kind of fastball that seemed destined to carry him to the top tier of professional baseball. Unfortunately for Stark, his baseball career came to a screeching halt in Mexico where he was playing ball there and preparing himself to make the big leap into the majors. But instead of moving up to the next level, Stark moved to a Mexican jail cell after he was wrongly charged with cocaine possession.

These days Stark contents himself with managing a small piece of property he owns in the desert outside Tucson that he calls “Double Wide.” He lives there in his own double wide trailer among a handful of other trailers that he rents out to any of society’s misfits who are content to live in the middle of nowhere with him. Stark is, in fact, called the mayor of Double Wide by his little community, a responsibility he takes seriously.

Whip Stark, though, has his self-contained little world rocked mightily one day when someone leaves a severed hand outside his trailer for him to find — a tattooed hand Stark easily recognizes as one two belonging to his former catcher in the Mexican League. Stark will not be able to rest until he learns the whole truth about what has happened to his friend. But is he searching for a dead body or a still-breathing man with one hand? After his initial efforts catch the unwanted attention of a Mexican drug cartel honcho, Stark is pretty sure that his friend is beyond rescue. 

Double Wide is full of offbeat characters willing to risk it all (not that they have all that much to lose) to help the mayor of Double Wide, Arizona, find out what happened to his missing friend. But it’s when Stark catches the attention of Roxanne Santa Cruz, a former teenaged stripper now turned on-air reporter for a Tucson TV station, that things really get wild as the pair fearlessly takes on anyone who stands in their way of learning the truth. And that means anyone.

Bottom Line: Double Wide is one of those violently bloody crime novels that can somehow best be described as humorous and lighthearted. Whip Stark and most of the side characters use wisecracks to lighten whatever situation they find themselves in, and Stark, as narrator, is particularly funny when addressing the reader with snappy little asides as he tells his story. That can be a lot of fun, but it does not always make for a realistic crime novel, and that’s the case here. It’s hard for the reader to take Double Wide completely seriously, but if you prefer crime novels with a lighter approach, this is one I think you will love.

Leo W. Banks