Nevertheless, Galveston is still well-worth checking out. But, given the very brisk pacing, by the brutal end, the dénouement was robbed of some impact, while remaining tragic. There is a fever-like quality to Roy’s recollection and narrative – he is, after all, a practicing alcoholic who necks one hell of a lot of bourbon in these pages…īy the end of the novel, I felt pretty invested in these characters’ fates. However, it does also mean certain things aren’t developed too much. This has the positive effect of making this a very quick read (I read the first 10% on a Saturday night, after finishing another novel, and blitzed through the rest on Sunday). There isn’t a redundant phrase or extraneous word in sight. Pizzolatto writes incredibly well: his prose is stripped back, fluid and sparse. Instead, he plays a role of protector and, in some ways, rehabilitator – a somewhat ironic role, given his own past actions (not to mention present/future actions that he commits over the course of the story). Definitely attracted to Rocky, he is unwilling to allow himself to accept any of her advances – at first, somewhat business-like, but later perhaps genuine. Ruminating on his life and his pending death-by-cancer, he develops a wary connection with Rocky and Tiffany. Roy soon finds that, despite a desire to ditch Rocky (and her toddler ‘sister’, Tiffany, who they pick up on the way to Texas), he can’t seem to follow through. After the set-up (mentioned in the synopsis, above), he escapes bruised and brutalised, taking with him Rocky (Raquel), the partner of a prostitute who was turning a trick at the home of the trap. The story is told from the perspective of Roy, a bagman for a crook in New Orleans. However, it also left me slightly dissatisfied at the end. This is a good thriller: very well-written and fast-paced. Only after finishing this novel, did I learn that Pizzolatto is the creator of HBO’s critically-acclaimed True Detective series (starring Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConnaughey). He takes her with him on the run from New Orleans to Galveston, Texas, permanently entwining their fate along a highway of seedy bars and fleabag hotels, a world of treacherous drifters, pick-up trucks, and ashed-out hopes, with death just a car-length behind. Yet after a smoking spasm of violence, Roy’s would-be killers are mostly dead and he is mostly alive.īefore Roy makes his getaway, he finds a beaten-up woman in the apartment, and sees something in her frightened, defiant eyes that causes a crucial decision.
Following a fling with his boss’s lover, he’s sent on a routine assignment he knows is a death trap. With a snow flurry of cancer in his lungs and no one to live for, he’s a walking time-bomb of violence. Roy Cady is by his own admission “a bad man”.
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