Dallas author Ben Fountain’s latest book, 'Devil Makes Three,' requires commitment. The novel melds spy-thriller energy with Haitian history and culture.
Woven throughout is a spy-thriller-worthy plot, complete with buried treasure, double-crosses, gun-running, drug-dealing and deadly factional feuds. The violence is never lurid, but Fountain doesn’t gloss over it, either. A pair of characters whom readers have grown to know and like are murdered, and no one knows who did it or why. In the vast bloodletting, these are just two more lives.
The author has many points to make about Haiti in the book — perhaps too many — but chief among them is U.S. complicity in the country’s misfortunes. Audrey is the main vehicle for exploring this theme. She starts out confident and careless, certain that she and her CIA colleagues know how to straighten out Haiti. Despite her baseline contempt for Haitians to manage their own affairs, she becomes fascinated by Vodou, the Haitian version of voodoo.
will be a rewarding read. It’s an immersive look at one of the most troubled places on Earth. Once the reader is invested in these characters, it’s sobering to consider all that is still to come in Haiti’s future: tropical storms and hurricanes, a catastrophic earthquake, a cholera outbreak, more political upheaval.
And for readers who aren’t interested in Haiti? Will the evocative writing, well-drawn characters and sturdy plot be enough to sustain them?This is a dense, complicated novel, not one to speed through on a two-hour flight. It requires commitment.
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