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Revision as of 16:12, 29 August 2020
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Janet Moodie is a seasoned death row appeals attorney. Overworked, lonely, and feeling like she's drunk her fill of desperation and sadness, she takes on one final case, determined it will be her last. Marion 'Andy' Hardy is sweet, polite, good-natured, and a little slow, but according to the state, he's also a rapist and a murderer. Moodie must untangle his aging ageing case against the clock. She can't save his innocence, but maybe she ''can'' save his life.
It is a mistake to think that strengths and weaknesses apply universally across books. Or rather, it is a mistake to believe that any quality – pace, premise, humour, heart – is descriptive enough in its own right to explain why a story doesn't work. Rather, each quality has a relationship with another, and it is in those failed relationships that we perceive fault.
To its credit, ''Two Lost'' boys finishes strongly. Not with a bang, but as the plot peters out, with a measured musing on the begetting of violence and its echoes through generations. It is about hopelessness, the tragedy of life and family as a trap, even managing to echo Cormac McCarthy's cynicism in all the right ways. But by this point, it only leads to lament that the rest was so weak.
A death row novel by a death row lawyer. Relatively devoid of sensationalism, dare I say, probably relatively real. What may be true to life , however, is achieved here to the detriment of fiction. Strengths become weakness when they fail to marry the rest of the form. ''Two Lost Boys'' is too slow, too simple, too tentative in its style to burst into life. It has a promising ending though, and it is from this that the author should be seeking to build.
For further reading, try The Racketeer by John Grisham [[The Racketeer by John Grisham]].
