Review of Nic Pizzolatto's "Galveston," a Knockout Crime Novel

I was camping in the mountains west of Cottonwood Pass, Colorado this weekend, but on Sunday the following review of mine appeared in the Dallas Morning News: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/ent/books/stories/DN-bk_galveston_0620gd.ART.State.Bulldog.2951729.html
Galveston is a terrific book, and whenever I get a chance I’m going to check out Nic Pizzolatto’s short stories too. The people are hopeless and down on their luck, but I’m not one to demand that all fictional characters be ‘likable,’ ugh. That policy produces a ton of squishy, psuedoromantic stories, full of luminous endings and assorted treacle. Roy Cady, the antihero of Galveston, is a bad dude. His heart may have some gold in it, but it’s tarnished at best. The scene where he goes to visit an old girlfriend who has gone ‘straight’ is intense and menacing. My only quibble with the description of Galveston, Texas, where I lived in early childhood and near where I was born (Texas City), is that it sugarcoats the Gulf there: At one point he refers to the Gulf as ‘blue,’ and unfortunately, the water there is a light brown color, like latte, like the Mississippi River silt that colors it. But that’s not a big deal. The rest of the description of Galveston and New Orleans seems right on, if on the bleak side.