Every Cloak Rolled in Blood by James Lee Burke

 

This is a really, really good novel, even though it plays in that space around death and life and includes plainly supernatural doings. Meaning, it operates in a similar space as last night's novel, which I didn't like as much, at least in part because it did those things. On the one hand, it's easy to say it's that Burke's a better write--he really is. On the other, though, there's something about the handling of things, the way so many of the characters in this novel rage and fight against the ghosts and the demons; Connolly's characters are either blind to all-a-that or they're deeply a part of it and just treat it as like Tuesday. Connolly's makes the horrific bland, Burke's embraces the horror while still somehow making the mundane horrific. There are spiritualistic undertones in the Burke novel that border on the religious, and that's really not my jam, but there are reasons, and Burke can write, so I'm just going to say this is a beautifully painful novel that at points slants against my preferences.