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Jump to navigationJump to searchCrosshairs of the Devil by Yancey Williams (view source)
Revision as of 12:59, 31 August 2021
, 12:59, 31 August 2021no edit summary
Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to his daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, from Eddie's point of view - in room 315 of the Garden of Eden nursing home, with only a trusty nursing aide, Jenkins, for palatable company. Nothing is going to keep Eddie from his stock-in-trade of writing though, so here, for his readers, are his wanderings through his life's work.
If you can keep up with the speed and spattering of his output, what you'll find are excerpts from Eddie's fiction, some autobiographical passages, encounters with a bemused police officer, arguments with the home's supervisor, and an array of gruesome testimonies from the victims of a prolific mob hitman, Richard 'The Iceman' Kuklinski. who Eddie claims as a first cousin. Which are fact and which are fiction is left to you, the reader, to decide. As are which are moments of lucidity from Eddie and which are the meanderings of a mind playing a dance with the addlement of old age. My favourite tale was a long excerpt from and experience of the Vietnam War, which somehow managed to be both horrific and endearing.
Oh, I loved, loved, ''loved'', reading this novel. It's wild and anarchic, rushing backward and forward so that you rarely know whether you're coming or going. Eddie, living out his final days - or is he?! - in the Garden of Eden nursing home, is an ebullient but recalcitrant character. He causes trouble wherever he goes and delights in it. His partner-in-crime come nursing aide Jenkins is a loyal presence in the background and I found myself wondering what on earth he ''really'' thought of his charge. I like to think that he had as much regard for Eddie as it turns out Eddie has for him.
