3.5 stars: I read 20 pages of this book and put it aside for 10 days. I went back to it with the idea that I'd read another chapter and see whether I wanted to finish it. I finished it and think Smith is a talent. I'm still not sure what I think about the book. ( )

3.5 stars: I read 20 pages of this book and put it aside for 10 days. I went back to it with the idea that I'd read another chapter and see whether I wanted to finish it. I finished it and think Smith is a talent. I'm still not sure what I think about the book. ( )

This book was definitely not for me. I have no doubt that the author is talented and can write, I just have no idea why he chose to write this type of book (a criminal on the run for ripping off his boss) in the style he did.
Never before have I read a book where it was imperative that you read the description on the back of it. I say this because The author tells the story as if you already know everything as it is taking place, who everyone is and why what is happening or has happened, did.
The first chapter alone assumes you know the story it assumes you are familiar with Key West. it assumes you know all of the people being described, and therefore nothing is explained. This made reading the book a real chore to get as far into it as I bothered. The dialogue between the characters in the book- and there is not a lot of it- is clipped and does not help to tell the story. As other reviewers on Goodreads said some sentences are a paragraph long, you read the paragraph and realize there was no need for it.
It is as if the goal of this book was to take everything that is ever taught in a creative writing class (especially the heavy use of metaphors whether they are needed or not) amplify it by a 1000% and see what happens.
Here is an example of the writing, it is from page 10 and at this point all you know is that his mothers house was damaged in a hurricane (it has slipped off its pilings and she has decided to sleep underneath it. The main character Cot is having lunch with mother and other people you are already supposed to know, or have sort of already met but don't know if they are important to the story or not.

People drifted by the table, locals in ordinary clothing, students from his mother’s teaching days at the college, lifelong friends, enemies on recon pretending to be friends, stooges, penitents, the raddled and uncomfortable, the shame-faced—a few who wanted mostly to bask in the glow of her latest trouble—nomads, the congenitally misguided, old men with enlarged hernias, ladies in clothes that’d gone out of style before the last war, stragglers, and those who rode tiny bicycles, others carrying their humiliation before them like a scrofula. How come you got into this? somebody was always asking him—meaning this outlaw business—and Cot said, I never wanted to be the one laying down the law, but this was just what he couldn’t stop doing. That was clear to him.

This example takes place right after the one from above. It is an example of dialogue on a phone call between Cot and an assistant who works for Cot's boss neither of whom have been previously Introduced in the story. If you did not read the back book description you would be even more clueless as to what is going on.

His phone buzzed. It was Spane checking on him. “Comp wants you to drop by to take a look at those beach properties,” Spane said.
“I’ll have to rent a truck.”
“Maybe you can get Eustace to carry you. Tell him to put it on the tab.”
“Comp’s got a tab with Eustace?”
“Come on, B-boy.”
You couldn’t tell but they were dead in earnest, playful maybe but also hard and careful, all the names changed and everything in code even though they were talking on unregistered phones. Most names.
Spane always choked up on everything so he could get a better grip, swing faster. His voice like something with most of the juice squeezed out of it. Albertson’s second, he was the one went around checking to make sure instructions were carried out, went around figuring as he moved, catching the details on the fly. He had flat hairy wrists and wore a mustache that he regularly shaved off. The first day without the stache his creased face looked an extra size larger, not a reassuring thing.
“I got you,” he said, and Cot wondered what he meant but didn’t say anything. “You there?” Spane said.
“Sure.”
Spane was sorry for Cot, but he didn’t say this. There were developments Cot hadn’t foreseen—Spane hadn’t foreseen some of the developments himself, but most of those were in another area—catches and loopholes and asides and unduplicable scenarios that would bust him up if he knew, but he didn’t know. But Spane was aware, as Cot was, that no info was safe from detection. This knowledge made his voice come through a little rougher than necessary. “You got it? he said.
“I do.”
“How’s your mother?”
“Miz Ella? Bewildered but doesn’t know it—or won’t admit it.”
“Like you and me.”
“Don’t talk about me as if I wasn’t there—here,” his mother said looking up from her mango snapper ceviche. This embarrassed Cot, and he said so. Said after hanging up the phone. Spane had told him to go ahead to the island tomorrow. He wanted him to do a count, some idea of Albertson’s. Cot didn’t know if he would go or not—or no, he knew, he was going; the impulse had clicked over into a plan on the way down. But he had never liked being out on the water, or above it. Odd for a man born and raised on a two-by-four gob of limestone in the middle of the sea. The grit in Spane’s voice disturbed him, and he wondered if Spane knew, and if he did, what it was he knew. Across the table Marcella smiled at him. There was a drag in her smile, just a tiny bit left out or trying to break through, and he wondered what it was.
James Lee Burke use heavy description and metaphors in his books but still manages to tell good interesting stories, and have logical dialogue take place between characters. The author of this book manages none of this. ( )

Cot Sims, a low-level henchman who does “variety work” for a Miami gangster returns to his Key West hometown to help his mother when her house is declared uninhabitable after a storm. He also picks up again with Marcella, married now to the county prosecutor, but really the love of Cot’s life. “They hadn’t had to fight to get out and they didn’t have to fight to get back in.”

Cot steals some emeralds that belong to his boss, which brings a boatload of trouble on Cot and everyone he cares for.

Charlie Smith is a poet as well as a novelist, and it shows. Common observations become special: “A tiny, ambidextrous breeze pushes lightly at blossoms in the big tamarind tree in the alley.” He does little tricks like squeezing four colors into one sentence: “An orange cat sat up in a lime tree staring at some little black-faced birds flickering around in the top of a nearby manila palm.”

This is a crime novel, but a lyrical, poetical one. “The brilliant Key West day leaning down like an old man looking at a bright feather on the floor.” It contains the best of both worlds – the action never droops under the weight of the description. ( )

I don't know about this. I can't figure out what is going on or get into the book! I read this whole book and there were parts that were good but I never knew what was going on in the book. I was just as confused when I finished it as when I started it. Maybe I will read some other people's reviews and see if that helps. I received the book for free through Goodreads First Reads. ( )