Three recent novels by Stephen Graham Jones, Attica Locke and Michael Farris Smith through the lens of Repo Man and True Detective:
There’s a scene in Repo Man where a car-lot attendant explains to a young repo man how the world operates, a worldview he calls the “lattice of coincidence.”
“Suppose you’re thinkin’ about a plate of shrimp,” he says. “Suddenly someone’ll say, like, ‘plate’ or ‘shrimp’ or ‘plate of shrimp’ out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin’ for one, either. It’s all part of a cosmic unconsciousness.”
Lately, my plate of shrimp has been True Detective. It’s been at least six weeks since the season finale and I can’t stop thinking about the show. I see it everywhere—even in the books I read. But is it me, or is it the “cosmic unconsciousness”? Because the last three books I read all contained uncanny echoes of True Detective.