So much more than a crime novel.......it functions on multiple levels......60's Americana, JFK's assassination, signaling the end of innocence and the beginning of nihilistic violence and paranoia in everyone's lives.......and the first glimmer of women demanding freedom and independence in a male dominated society......
Anything I left out? Oh right.......a slow burn, touching love story.on top of everything just mentioned.
If you think Lou Berney can't keep all these balls in the air simultaneously, read it. He does. And then some.
His principal character, Frank Guidry, barely qualifies as a hero. A dutiful foot soldier for his boss, New Orleans mafioso Carlos Marcello, Frank's due for extermination..........for disposing of a getaway car used in Marcello's successful plot to murder John F. Kennedy. IYes, it's fiction, but that's as good a theory as any of the others floating around....)
Marcello's tying up all loose ends before the Warren Commission comes sniffing around and Frank's gotta go......
Pursued by his boss's relentless hitmen, Frank goes on the run in plain sight by befriending Charlotte, a bright young woman who's fled her empty unhappy marriage, taking her two small daughters with her. No longer a lone wolf, his pursuers are slow to find out he's now travelling with an instantly found family.......
What Frank doesn't count on (but we all can see this coming).......falling in love with Charlotte and her children........and desperately trying to engineer an escape for all four of them.
BQ will say no more.......other than READ IT! Very much like the last book I posted about, Larry Watson's "Let Him Go", here's another thriller that'll keep you pinned to your easy chair and break you heart at the same time......
And that kind of book always, always gets no less than 4 stars here (****)
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