Krist Novoselic’s column runs every Tuesday on the Daily Weeekly.Pierce County prosecutor Mark Lindquist’s 2007 novel, The King of Methlehem, tells the story of the subterranean culture of methamphetamine use in which tweakers stay awake for days at a time to cook meth, steal identities, and destroy their own lives and those of their children.In it, Detective Wyatt is after the King of Methlehem – a crafty and intelligent meth-cook who goes by the various aliases of Howard Shultz, Lars Ulrich or Ted Nugent. Howard strives to excel. Conscious that he’s the best, he upholds his personal standards amidst squalor, depravity and decay.Lindquist describes moldy trailer houses with blue plastic tarps on the roofs and the disgusting living space inside. It’s a common sight in rural Washington and not putting lichens and spores aside, I could call the novel “Grunge literature” because of its many references to Northwest music. (Another Lindquist novel, Never Mind Nirvana, is a work of fiction set in Seattle’s music scene.)Methlehem is an engaging read, with perspectives on personal relationships of individuals who work inside and or live closely with the legal justice system. But it’s not just a crime drama, it is an insight into public policy in Washington from a man who is expected to be appointed Pierce County Prosecutor later this year. Lindquist goes as far as writing a courtroom scene that culminates with a criticism of an actual Washington State Supreme Court Justice.Pierce County is ground zero of the meth epidemic in our state. Clandestine laboratories churn out the illegal drugs to where the prosecutors have so many cases, the staff can barely keep things together with the resources they have. But the bureaucracy manages to do the job, with legal forms filled in triplicate and shuffled through a factory-like process itself. There’s an even handedness of sorts as we read about the meth users medicating themselves on concoctions derived from a mixture of pseudoephedrine and the motor vehicle fuel additive HEET – while the legal establishment drink scotch, smoke cigarettes or even toke pot.Real life prosecutor Lindquist is living in the trenches, and the King of Methlehem is a reflection of that. Bureaucrats are usually a frumpy lot, making it all the more refreshing to see a public servant express themselves regarding state and local government in the forum of literature.Tacoma is the major city in Pierce, and most Nirvana fans know that our band operated a lot in the City of Destiny. I maintain that T-Town is actually more architecturally interesting than Seattle. And it’s Lindquist’s Tacoma-centric writing (not to mention the book’s political bent) that drew me into Methlehem’s prose.Whenever I find myself driving through Parkland in Pierce, I find myself thinking of Jerry Cantrell from Alice In Chains – who grew up there. And I always get the same sentiment from folks who pass through Aberdeen. It’s geographic / cultural and has nothing to do with drugs. Methlehem even mentions Cantrell to the same effect. Parkland is dissected by Pacific Avenue; a seemingly endless boulevard of strip malls and shops that eventually ends at the Roy Y – the threshold to majestic Mount Rainer. Howard, the King of Methlehem, has his aspirations and imagines his own triumph. But he is a ruler among petty criminals who can only reach peaks via the sick powder they consume. There was no real, beautiful mountain in the distance; only doom for those stuck on the meth rush.