The aftermath of an unsolved crime, a crucifixion, from forty years ago. Race relations in the Louisiana countryside where the Civil Rights movement of the sixties had been no more than a blip on a screen. An idealistic photographer whose early pictures had been merely setups. A Hollywood company, complete with a crass director and an undercurrent of sex and drugs, in town to make a movie. James Lee Burke's Sunset Limited held lots of promise. Close to three hundred pages later, however, I was once again struggling with who was who—even though I had been treated to a costume sketch every time one of them entered.
I will give him credit for the occasional, well written sentence, but not when Miss Picky became irritated..
1) Two analogies caught my attention. A) About a section of New Orleans: "… back streets with open ditches, railroad tracks that dissected yards and pavements, and narrow paintless houses in rows like bad teeth, …" (page 30) Yep. Poor neighborhoods can look like that. B) Describing a phone call: "It was like having a conversation with impaired people in a bowling alley." (page 162.) Cool. Even if not terribly productive.
2) Summing up in a few words what I consider to be a truth impresses me. Robicheaux wonders why the forty-years-ago crucifixion haunts him. "Maybe because the past is never really dead, at least not as long as you deny its existence." (page 71) Dang! Faulkner used a whole lot more words to say the same thing over and over again. And why do I think it's true? Because of slavery and its aftermath in our country. IMHO, Eric Holder's controversial statement last month hit the nail on the head.
3) Now a word on foreshadowing: In the last Robicheaux book, I quoted a moment that I thought was good foreshadowing. What I didn’t mention was that IMHO Burke loused it up by having the anticipated moment happen on the next page—and not be that big a deal. He does it again in this book. "Idle words that I would try to erase from my memory later." (page 70) Rochicheaux has been warned that his partner, Helen, can be "very creative." Cool. What's Helen gonna do? Curious—nay, make that anxious—I flip pages—or page. Then, a man on the movie set gets out of line and she hits him. BFD. If you're gonna build anticipation, gratify it! I don't think I'll be trusting Burke's foreshadowing any longer.
4) I don't think an author has to search for untold different words to describe the same action. I read the sentence "He inserted a Lucky Strike in his mouth" (page 180) and was totally pulled out of the story. Inserted? IMHO "insert" connotes an action performed with a degree of care. As a smoker for many years, I never sensed I inserted a cigarette. So why "insert," Mr. Burke? I started watching the book's smokers. " … [H]e stuck an unlit cigarette in his mouth." (page 211) Much better. I think there was one other spot, but I didn't mark it, so I'll make my point from these two. Granted, writers should not use the same word over and over and over. But when the alternate word ruins the flow? I dunno. Maybe it's simply a judgment call, but I think that in this case Burke chose wrong.
Overall? Five fish to go.
