From Amazon.com
Penzler Pick, December 2001: James Carlos Blake has written several novels, but this is the first that can be categorized wholeheartedly as a mystery. Set in the Southwest of 1928, it tells the story of three men who go on a journey of robbery and unintentional murder throughout Louisiana and Texas.
Sonny LaSalle is only a few years younger than his twin uncles, Russell and Buck, and he adores them and their way of life, which involves mostly robbing banks and rigging gambling scams. When he suggests that they take him on as a third partner, they indulge him and let him drive the getaway car on a bank robbery. Sonny is immediately caught and put in a holding cell where a fight breaks out. When Sonny hits a rookie cop who is trying to break up the fight, he inadvertently kills him and is sent to the infamous Angola prison in Louisiana for the long haul. But it's not in Sonny's nature to stay cooped up for long, and he soon escapes, doing what only a few have done before him: running along the levee to freedom and back to his uncles.
From then on, these charming felons career across the landscape stealing just enough money to keep them comfortable, meeting women, and helping damsels in distress. What these carefree villains do not know, but the reader does, is that the rookie cop's father, John Isley Bonham, is not going to simply let Sonny go free. Bonham is a longtime deputy sheriff near retirement. His life has been tragic, and the only joy he ever had was through his son. Bonham is said to have killed more men than any cop in the state. Although he's always claimed self- defense, rumor has it that some of the killings were, in fact, executions. Now he starts his slow, relentless campaign to hunt Sonny down and kill him. Russell, Buck, and Sonny do kill some innocent people, it's true, but compared to Bonham they are amateurs--and Bonham is closing in on them.
For fans of Daniel Woodrell, James Lee Burke, and Robbers, last year's exceptional first novel by Christopher Cook, this book is a must. --Otto Penzler
From Booklist
Blake revisits familiar territory with another story of an outlaw, this time set in Prohibition-era Louisiana and Texas. Sonny LaSalle, the tragic hero, is orphaned at age 18 and decides to take up with his two beloved uncles, lifelong criminals. After a bank robbery gone wrong, he lands in jail, where he accidentally kills a policeman who is the son of a very influential, very frightening man. Sonny is sentenced to 30 years at the Angola penitentiary but soon escapes with his uncles' help. They head to the oil boomtowns of west Texas, accompanied by long-suffering girlfriends and pursued by the revenge-hungry father, whose activities are described in superviolent chapters interspersed with the main story line. This is a fast-moving story with plenty of action and graphic detail but not really the "thriller" it claims to be. The outcome is all too predictable--the love of danger leads the trio straight past any chance at happiness and headlong into disaster. Still, the journey downward will appeal to noir fans.
Carrie BisseyCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
