Recent Reads: The Lies of Locke Lamora

Jesus.

I read LIES the year it came out, or close enough to count. In the intervening years I’d pretty well forgotten everything about it except that it was tremendously cleverly written and that somebody died, which is to say, there was a specific death I remembered.

I did not, however, remember the rest of the appalling brutality that went along with that specific death. It was nearly like reading the book entirely fresh: it was still tremendously cleverly written, but sweet mother of mercy,...