first set
What a sight!

The book
There is little that can shake Frank Guidry. But as the fun-loving Gangster from New Orleans sounds from the assassination of President Kennedy, is startled. It is clear, for which he has parked a few days earlier, in order of Mafia Boss Carlos Marcello in Dallas a getaway car. Now he should let the meanwhile, in Houston, standing the car disappear. In doing so, he realizes that he himself is on Marcello’s clean-up list.

the assassination of John F. Kennedy on 22. November 1963 is a Thriller from Lou Berney, but, even if the German edition with the title “Destination Dallas” – the Original of the novel “November Road is called” – and the photo suggests on the book cover. Berney tells the story of Franks feints a rich escape from the killers of the Mobsters. And, in parallel, the story of Charlotte. The young housewife who listens to the Radio like the young Bob Dylan, begins to despair whether the prospects of the life in the small town in Oklahoma offers: “Charlotte longed to live in a place where it was easier to distinguish the past from the future.” When your husband settles to a Bender, she grabs the suitcase and moves with her two small daughters and the family dog going in the direction of Los Angeles. A third strand of the plot tells the story of the bloody way of Marcello’s Killer through Texas and to Las Vegas.

The way of Frank and Charlotte cross, in the middle of the book in a Motel in a small town in New Mexico. Charlotte’s car is stuck. The charming Frank takes you and your children and the dog, because he hopes, as a father of a family the tracker disguised to fool, looking for a man traveling alone. In the common days of the abgefeimten crooks who used to use women for his purposes happens, something Inexplicable: He falls in love with the unconventional housewife and begins to dream of a joint family life. As he searches for an old friend in Las Vegas to help in the escape, pushes the Killer on his trail.

“Destination Dallas” is a wonderful mixture of hard Thriller and surprisingly unsentimental love story. With empathy and a wry sense of Humor Lou Berney of people from crisis to new perspectives and bold changes and new challenges to tackle told. And this is all against the Backdrop of an event that shook the world, and the society of the 1960s, the portion of the solidified conventions, but partly in a riser. A completely coherent work.

rating

author
Lou Berney, born 1964 in Oklahoma City in the U.S. state of Oklahoma, studied communication and journalism at Loyola University in New Orleans, and creative Writing at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His first book, “The Road to Bobby Joe and Other Stories”, a collection of short stories, appeared in 1991. Berney wrote for the major film production companies and TV channels, and screenplays, for example for the movie “Angels Sing” (2013; “My neighbor, the Santa Claus”). Since 2010, he has published four novels. For “The Long and Faraway Gone” (2015), he was awarded the Edgar Award, the most important prize for crime literature. “November Road” (2018; German: “Destination Dallas”, 2019) is his first work, which was published in German. The novel, to be filmed under the direction of veteran Lawrence Kasdan, was awarded at the end of March 2019 in Vancouver, Canada, with the Lefty Award for Best Mystery Novel. Lou Berney teaches at the Oklahoma City University creative Writing and literature . He lives in Oklahoma City.

Lou Berney: “Destination Dallas” (Original: “November Road”, William Morrow, New York in 2018). From the English by Mirga Nekvedavicius. HarperCollins, Hamburg, 2019. 350 p., about 23 Fr.

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(editing Tamedia)

Created: 10.04.2019, 16:04 p.m.