It’s completely predictable but I guess it’s nowhere near as bad as it could have been.
I read the Sinners and I think back to when Brubaker actually wrote real conversations. It’s like he uses Criminal‘s noir influences to excuse no one talking to each other, just at each other.
This issue features nothing new, no interesting developments in the criminal underworld of the nameless city, no insights into the Tracy Lawless character. It just trails off, cheating the reader out of the teenage killers getting killed. Their priest too. That scene with Tracy and the priest might be the lamest scene Brubaker’s ever written.
If I weren’t, basically, done with Brubaker, the Sinners might do it. I’m sure I’ll be back, I like Philips too much (not to mention bitching about cheap narrative tricks). But it wasn’t too long ago I’d salivate over a Brubaker book.
I miss it.
