New Orleans Escorts: Something’s Burning
August 14, 2010
This uncharacteristically urban novel may not present Anna with any endangered species to protect or environmental threats to ward off, but it does give her a chance to prove that her outdoor skills are adaptable to city streets. The harrowing plot, which concerns the organized sex traffic in young children, also provides Barr with an opportunity to sharpen her characters. Although she travels the pedestrian tourist route in New Orleans and makes little effort to capture the rhythms and inflections of regional speech, Barr doesn’t judge the locals by the colorful personalities they wear like carnival masks.
The bartenders, strippers, street musicians and voodoo-shop proprietors Anna meets during her search for a young punk she suspects of being a pedophile are well observed and closely analyzed. And her portrayal of Clare Sullivan, wanted on four counts of murder for killing her husband, their two children and his mistress and burning down the family home in Seattle, is as complex as it is sympathetic. By the time Clare and Anna join forces to infiltrate a brothel that trades in children, Barr is writing with the kind of ferocity she usually saves for her backcountry adventures.
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