Edge of Dark Water by Joe R. Lansdale
My rating: 3/5 cats
this book was just okay.
it’s a little east texas huck finn-ette story about a bunch of misfits who take to a raft after their friend is found at the bottom of the river with her hands wrapped in wire and attached to a sewing machine. turns out, she has a map to some buried cash, so they decide to take the money and her ashes to scatter her in hollywood, which is where she would have been headed had she not been, you know, murdered.
so all the misfit toys escape their demons and go on a river trip; the girl fleeing her momma’s laudanum addiction and her father’s grabby hands, the tough black chick getting outta racistville, the pretty boy homosexual…and then momma emerges out of her stupor long enough to come along. but seems everyone wants in on that cash, and there are several people in hot pursuit of our characters.
it’s a fast read, and that might be the problem. there really isn’t a lot of character-depth, and the action sequences are about what you would expect.
and i think that is the problem—this book is very expected. not from lansdale; this is my first book by him, but it pretty much turns out the way you know it’s gonna, and there is something unformed about its writing. there just aren’t a lot of surprises. you do find out who is responsible for may lynn’s death, which would’ve been surprising, but for one early-dropped hint.
i just never felt particularly intrigued by the story, but it is probably because i have read better villains in authors like mccarthy or any number of “crime fiction set in impoverished locales.” this one just didn’t give me that reader-shake i long for.
too bad, me…
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