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“There’s too much death,” I shuddered. “All your life you busted your ass, paid your taxes, and bathed daily. Then one day the ax fell, and you scrapped like a shithouse rat just to stay alive.”
Lake Charles, Ed Lynskey’s latest novel, takes place in the Tennessee hills in 1979. The story begins with Brendan Fishback, a young man taking a break from his job at a printery, his sister, Edna, and his brother-in-law, Cobb Kuzawa, embarking on a bass fishing trip at Lake Charles. The plot thickens when we learn that young Brendan is out on bail for the murder of Ashleigh Sizemore, a girl with whom he had a one-night stand.
When Edna disappears at the lake, Brendan and Cobb set out to find her. They stumble upon a large pot-growing operation, and Cobb winds up dead. Brendan soon finds himself caught up in murder and mayhem when Cobb’s father, a Korean War vet, and his sleazy defense lawyer, Herzog, join Brendan in the search for Cobb’s killer and Edna’s abductors.
The plot is complex, especially since the reader walks into what appears to be a story about a guy going off on a fishing trip with his sister and brother-in-law, only to discover after a couple of pages that Brendan already has a murder charge against him. The details of Brendan’s involvement with the deceased Ashleigh are dispersed throughout the novel, as Brendan is plagued by dreams that leave him fearing for his sanity. I’m usually not a big fan of this method, but here it works. Using his smooth writing style coupled with dark humor, Lynskey successfully brings everything together.
The characters are extremely well done; Lynskey creates a credible country kid in Brendan Fishback, who, once satisfied with smoking dope, drinking beer, and fooling around, has suddenly “gone over my limit of spies, jails, overdoses, kidnappings, beatings, double crosses, bullets, and all the furtive glances I’ve taken over my shoulder day and night.” Paired with tough war vet Kuzawa, a man with a military mentality on a mission, with a questionable background and a taste for vigilante justice (“This mission ran gory, but as I already told you, some dark s--- can’t be avoided. That’s life, son.”), and Brendan's nerves are hanging by a thread.
This story is raw, dark, unforgiving and never stops moving. Fans of Ed Lynskey’s Frank Johnson series, The Dirt Brown Derby, The Blue Cheer, Pelham Fell Here, and Troglodytes won’t be disappointed. For those not familiar with Ed Lynskey’s books, this is a good place to start.
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