Book Review: 'Occupational Hazards' by Jonathan Segura

'Occupational Hazards' by Jonathan Segura

Occupational Hazards
Jonathan Segura
Simon & Schuster, Jul 2008, $14.00
ISBN: 9781416562917


A $300 a-week beat reporter for Omaha's sketchy Weekly News-Telegraph, 'Occupational Hazard's' Bernard Cockburn is one of the more perversely satisfying anti-heroes of this or any other year. With first-person prose as lean as a marathon runner, freshman novelist Jonathan Segura adroitly serves us this slim but wickedly funny slice of noir. From the gate, we find the bitterly cynical Cockburn on-hand for a hostage negotiation with a deranged father holding his own 13 year old daughter at gunpoint. A quick transition or two later and we're at the dowdy headquarters of the Weekly News-Telegraph, where we meet Cockburn's publisher Manny Hertz. The improbably titled 'Chief of News and Marketing', Hertz proves himself worthy of the second half of his title and assigns Cockburn yet another thinly-disguised 'Advertorial'. Cockburn (pronounced Co-burn, a point Cockburn has to make repeatedly), has other fish to fry. Nevermind a drawer already full of unfinished exposés, Cockburn's instincts tell him a Downtown land deal has the lineaments of skullduggery. It seems a group of citizens bent on 'cleaning up' areas slated for redevelopment are not only vigilantes, but puppet-vigilantes at that. So, who pulls the strings?


Cockburn's investigation is soon awash in a sea of complications- it appears that a major advertiser of the News-Telegraph is somehow linked to the mounting body count. Bernard Cockburn will cause many readers to wonder aloud whether he's a bigger bastard or loser, but there's a quixotic element to Cockburn that should nonetheless keep the reader's sympathy solidly with him. Cockburn himself lives in one of the slums to be 'gentrified' by the very redevelopment deal he's investigating. As Cockburn sardonically sketches his world, we see that his bitter contempt extends to himself. Perhaps the only people Cockburn despises more than himself are power players. The only real distinction Cockburn sees between the street whores and bureaucrats he meets is point-of-purchase. I can think of few novels where bitter cynicism as the bastard step-child of disappointed idealism is revealed more convincingly than here by Segura.


Don't let that this is Segura's first novel have you assume that he is anything less than a scalpel-sharp raconteur. Segura endows Cockburn with an often howlingly hilarious, but always keen observational style. You may well find yourself vacillating between laughing your ass off and nodding your head at one of Cockburn's more profound observations. Cockburn, commenting on the desire of people to see their name in print says-

"Newspapers, see, are a gateway to fame, an institution dedicated to chronicling the feats of the extraordinary people who define our times. But the truth is that very few of us have something worthwhile to contribute. Every last one of us could just as easily blow off our heads tonight and leave nothing behind except a headstone that nobody visits, and the world will keep on turning without so much as a hiccup."

Later, we see Segura's ability to imply entire pages of back-story with astonishing brevity as Cockburn explains why he didn't listen for his girlfriend Allison's answer-

"I hang up before I hear the answer, because I know she's going to say no. Yeah, not only can I finish her sentences, but I don't even have to wait for her to start them."

Despite the moments of sharp wit, the relentless pace of this novel won't let you forget it's first and foremost noir. And grand noir at that.


Cockburn's life is laid out before us in vignettes of mocking mediocrity. Destiny has earmarked Cockburn for virtual non-existence, which Cockburn believes is revealed metaphorically by the City in which he lives and works. It seems Cockburn can't get through the day without being street-mugged by some new evidence of his own staggering insignificance. Between liberal applications of drugs and alcohol, Cockburn peels the layers of the Downtown redevelopment onion. Amidst Cockburn's bouts of flatulence and mild erectile dysfunction, Allison announces that she's pregnant. Cockburn's immediate reaction is to accuse Allison of a deliberate pregnancy. Ha. Everyone- including Cockburn in his more lucid moments- knows that Allison is more than Cockburn deserves.


Author Jonathan Segura has created in Bernard Cockburn a deeply complex character full of sneaky profundities and illuminating dichotomies. On the surface, Cockburn is engagingly reprehensible and estranged from the ethics of his profession. But the waters of 'Occupational Hazards' run much deeper. Not only does the outwardly deeply cynical Cockburn care greatly about the world he inhabits, he's willing to do much more than he'd ever admit to change it. When a deep, dark secret from Cockburn's past surfaces, and threatens Game Over, we come to know that Cockburn's not quite the punching bag he makes himself out to be. Cat and mouse will swap roles for us now and again. Settle in for the ride, it's worth the ticket.