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Rene Shade #3
The Ones You Do
"It's like dyin' old men all over the world will tell you - when you get aged and rackety and think back across your entire lifespan, why it ain't the ones you do, you regret, it's the ones you don't." Lunch Pumphrey is talking about sex, but he applies his philosophy to all aspects of life - which includes dealing with anyone who has the dim wit to double cross him and the bad luck to stick around for the consequences. And that's why old John X. Shade is on the lam, his nubile young wife having run off with $47,000 of Lunch Pumphrey's ill gotten gains, leaving John X. behind with an empty safe and a wise-ass daughter, the fruit of his middle age. Given a certified sociopath like Lunch on his tail, an empty bank account and hands too shaky to hold the pool cue that once made his fame and fortune, John X. has only one way to Home to the first wife and three sons - now grown - he abandoned years ago, back to the steamy bayou town of St Bruno.
251 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1988
6 people are currently reading
436 people want to read
About the author
Daniel Woodrell
28 books1,352 followersGrowing up in Missouri, seventy miles downriver from Hannibal, Mark Twain was handed to me early on, first or second grade, and captivated me for years, and forever, I reckon. Robert Louis Stevenson had his seasons with me just before my teens and I love him yet. There are too many others to mention, I suppose, but feel compelled to bring up Hemingway, James Agee, Flannery O'Connor, John McGahern, Knut Hamsun, Faulkner, George Mackay Brown, Tillie Olsen, W.S. Merwin, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Andrew Hudgins, Seamus Heaney, Derek Wolco.
Daniel Woodrell was born and now lives in the Missouri Ozarks. He left school and enlisted in the Marines the week he turned seventeen, received his bachelor's degree at age twenty-seven, graduated from the Iowa Writer's Workshop, and spent a year on a Michener Fellowship. His five most recent novels were selected as New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and Tomato Red won the PEN West award for the novel in 1999. Winter's Bone is his eighth novel.
Daniel Woodrell was born and now lives in the Missouri Ozarks. He left school and enlisted in the Marines the week he turned seventeen, received his bachelor's degree at age twenty-seven, graduated from the Iowa Writer's Workshop, and spent a year on a Michener Fellowship. His five most recent novels were selected as New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and Tomato Red won the PEN West award for the novel in 1999. Winter's Bone is his eighth novel.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 53 reviews
April 22, 2013
This is the third and final entry in Daniel Woodrell's Bayou Trilogy featuring St. Bruno, Louisiana police detective Rene Shade. In this book, though, Rene has been suspended from the department and appears only occasionally. The main protagonist is actually Rene's father, John X. Shade, a pool hustler who had abandoned the family years earlier.
John is now well into his sixties and living in Mobile, Alabama. His vision is getting blurry; he's got the shakes, and his days of making serious money as a pool sharp are well behind him. He's reduced to working at a rib joint to support himself, his new much younger wife, and their very precocious ten-year-old daughter, Etta.
John's wife, Randi, "The 'Bama Butterfly," is an aspiring singer, and as the book opens, she's decided to pursue her destiny in Europe where she feels that her talent will be more appreciated. She leaves Etta behind to deliver a note to John informing him of the situation.
To make matters worse, Randi finances her trip by stealing $47,000 from the safe of John's boss, a five-foot, six-inch psychopath named Lunch Pumphery. Lunch is totally nuts and Shade knows that Lunch will hold him responsible for the money. Shade figures that the only sensible thing to do, then, is to whack Lunch over the head a couple of times with a bottle of Maker's Mark, gather up Etta and hit the road.
Shade decides to return to his old home in St. Bruno where he was once the most handsome man in town, for a reunion with his three sons, Rene among them. Lunch Pumphrey is in hot pursuit, and things are bound to get dicey.
This is a hugely entertaining read with engaging characters, great dialogue and interesting observations about family ties and Cajun life. The daughter, Etta, is brilliantly conceived and steals virtually every scene in which she appears. Given the lifestyle of her parents she's obviously old beyond her years and is curious about a great many things. She wonders, for example, "what would've happened if they hadn't killed Christ for our sins? I mean, if instead they'd just dragged Him out back and slapped Him around some?"
Daniel Woodrell is obviously incapable of writing a bad book and it's hard to imagine anyone who wouldn't enjoy this one.
John is now well into his sixties and living in Mobile, Alabama. His vision is getting blurry; he's got the shakes, and his days of making serious money as a pool sharp are well behind him. He's reduced to working at a rib joint to support himself, his new much younger wife, and their very precocious ten-year-old daughter, Etta.
John's wife, Randi, "The 'Bama Butterfly," is an aspiring singer, and as the book opens, she's decided to pursue her destiny in Europe where she feels that her talent will be more appreciated. She leaves Etta behind to deliver a note to John informing him of the situation.
To make matters worse, Randi finances her trip by stealing $47,000 from the safe of John's boss, a five-foot, six-inch psychopath named Lunch Pumphery. Lunch is totally nuts and Shade knows that Lunch will hold him responsible for the money. Shade figures that the only sensible thing to do, then, is to whack Lunch over the head a couple of times with a bottle of Maker's Mark, gather up Etta and hit the road.
Shade decides to return to his old home in St. Bruno where he was once the most handsome man in town, for a reunion with his three sons, Rene among them. Lunch Pumphrey is in hot pursuit, and things are bound to get dicey.
This is a hugely entertaining read with engaging characters, great dialogue and interesting observations about family ties and Cajun life. The daughter, Etta, is brilliantly conceived and steals virtually every scene in which she appears. Given the lifestyle of her parents she's obviously old beyond her years and is curious about a great many things. She wonders, for example, "what would've happened if they hadn't killed Christ for our sins? I mean, if instead they'd just dragged Him out back and slapped Him around some?"
Daniel Woodrell is obviously incapable of writing a bad book and it's hard to imagine anyone who wouldn't enjoy this one.
June 26, 2016
Description: Recently jilted by his young wife, Rene's father, John X. Shade, has come back to St. Bruno. Broke, boozed-out and too shaky to hold the pool cue that once made his fame and fortune, John X. seeks the sons he abandoned years ago for more than an ordinary reunion.
The last book in the trilogy and finally we get to meet the father...
The last book in the trilogy and finally we get to meet the father...
August 19, 2015
Allow me to paraphrase what the psychopathic, pint-sized gangster Lunch Pumphery says himself, “It’s never the ones you do that you regret; it’s the ones you don’t.”
And man, oh, man, is this one of them ones you don’t want to regret. While packaged as the final entry in a trilogy of crime novels taking place in a nogood, coonass town called St. Bruno, the Ones You Do loosens-up a more constrained genre-bound necktie and turns a grade-A noir set-up into a funny, joyous, gloomy and heartbreaking look at family.
Aging and ailing pool shark John X Shade is forced to go on the lamb—along with his slick-talking, southern-fried, gothed-out 10-year-old daughter, Etta—after his dead-beat wife and mother of his child steals all of his employer’s loot and beats feet to Europe, visions of being the next Madonna dancing about in her good-for-nothing head. John X may have not lived a life full of moderation or wise choices, but he sure as shit knows that his boss, the aforementioned loony toon, Lunch –wonderfully nicknamed such because you better believe he’ll eat your lunch if you give him half-a-chance—is going to kill him and his daughter and probably eat them too.
And so John X and Etta flee from Mobile, Alabama (Roll Tide, ya’ll!) to St. Bruno, Louisiana, where John X happened to abandon an ex-wife and three sons many decades ago. One of these sons, Rene Shade, was the star of the first two books, doing the thankless duty of being the one good cop in a dirty police department. But Rene takes a backseat in this book, pulling only minor character duty, while John X and (mostly) Etta steal the show. And as the blithe Lunch makes his ponderous yet violent and disturbing way towards St. Bruno, the family John X left behind do the slow and painful task of taking his sleazy ass back into their lives (no, he doesn’t tell them about the missing money or the murderous midget [Lunch is actually 5’6”, but much humor is made throughout the book at the expense of his height]), as well as trying to figure this little oddity of a new sister the three sons now have to look out for.
Woodrell ’s acid-jazzed-up prose (read a Mile s Davis’s Bitches Brew kind of cool) delights in the many charms of dialect while maintaining a clipped tumble down the page. In full raconteur mode, Woodrell’s narration sexily snaps about from character to character, giving the reader a lot of looks at what each of his characters thinks family means to them personally, without ever force-feeding an overtly authorial answer. It’s all to be found in glorious, glorious high definition subtext.
A must read for any fan of crime novels, southern fiction, or just plain, old badass books. Ya’ll take it easy now, ya hear.
And man, oh, man, is this one of them ones you don’t want to regret. While packaged as the final entry in a trilogy of crime novels taking place in a nogood, coonass town called St. Bruno, the Ones You Do loosens-up a more constrained genre-bound necktie and turns a grade-A noir set-up into a funny, joyous, gloomy and heartbreaking look at family.
Aging and ailing pool shark John X Shade is forced to go on the lamb—along with his slick-talking, southern-fried, gothed-out 10-year-old daughter, Etta—after his dead-beat wife and mother of his child steals all of his employer’s loot and beats feet to Europe, visions of being the next Madonna dancing about in her good-for-nothing head. John X may have not lived a life full of moderation or wise choices, but he sure as shit knows that his boss, the aforementioned loony toon, Lunch –wonderfully nicknamed such because you better believe he’ll eat your lunch if you give him half-a-chance—is going to kill him and his daughter and probably eat them too.
And so John X and Etta flee from Mobile, Alabama (Roll Tide, ya’ll!) to St. Bruno, Louisiana, where John X happened to abandon an ex-wife and three sons many decades ago. One of these sons, Rene Shade, was the star of the first two books, doing the thankless duty of being the one good cop in a dirty police department. But Rene takes a backseat in this book, pulling only minor character duty, while John X and (mostly) Etta steal the show. And as the blithe Lunch makes his ponderous yet violent and disturbing way towards St. Bruno, the family John X left behind do the slow and painful task of taking his sleazy ass back into their lives (no, he doesn’t tell them about the missing money or the murderous midget [Lunch is actually 5’6”, but much humor is made throughout the book at the expense of his height]), as well as trying to figure this little oddity of a new sister the three sons now have to look out for.
Woodrell ’s acid-jazzed-up prose (read a Mile s Davis’s Bitches Brew kind of cool) delights in the many charms of dialect while maintaining a clipped tumble down the page. In full raconteur mode, Woodrell’s narration sexily snaps about from character to character, giving the reader a lot of looks at what each of his characters thinks family means to them personally, without ever force-feeding an overtly authorial answer. It’s all to be found in glorious, glorious high definition subtext.
A must read for any fan of crime novels, southern fiction, or just plain, old badass books. Ya’ll take it easy now, ya hear.
May 31, 2016
I think it was back in 2012 that I took a long trip to England and stocked up on readily available, dirt cheap secondhand paperbacks in the process. I'm pretty sure that's how I acquired most of my Daniel Woodrell novels, judging by the pencil price marked on the first page of The Ones You Do anyway. Only this copy came with a little added extra not intended by Woodrell when he wrote the story, thanks to a customer of Baggins Book Bazaar I imagine, I was the recipient of an "insightful" series of underlinings with black pen and ruler.
They started with enthusiasm and rapidly ran out of steam, only remembering their task in fits and starts as the book progresses. I like to think that the story was so engrossing that they completely forgot that they were reading it for homework and just steamed through it as I did. I shall now share a sample of the words chosen by our mystery user of black pen as it's a good example of what Woodrell does best I feel.
"last-call Lotharios from along the Redneck Riviera"
"Europe loves ballads of amore and shitty luck and am I ever he thrush for them!"
"like a precociously forlorn honky-tonker."
"the stark moral to a cautionary homily he'd chosen to ignore."
"a tangle of Appalachian underbrush in it...about five and a half feet of condensed malevolence."
But by the time my favourite piece of description came around the pen had been lost and for those of us grown accustomed to having the good bits pointed out to us it could quite easily have been missed.
"John Smith had the complete barnyard of personal characteristics: ox-sized, goose-necked, cow-eyed, a hog gut, probably mule-headed, and clearly goaty of appetite. His hair worn in the style of an early Beatle."
This early example of the man's work is slighter than the remarkably dark, deep and far reaching literature of Winter's Bone, in fact it is much closer to a disposable piece of genre fiction than I expected the mind behind Woe To Live On capable of, but as the above quotes hopefully demonstrate it's still a work of a man capable of evoking sense of place and people with a flair for entertaining sentence construction.
There's a sense of inevitability about the whole thing which underpins the reconnection of an estranged family, giving it all a bittersweet feeling, but that's not to suggest there's anything obvious about the last few weeks in the life of John X. Shade; simply that when A happens in the first couple of pages, Z is the clear outcome in the final pages. Everything in between is a nice surprise, and in the case of Lunch Pumphrey's encounter with a motel prostitute a quite horrible surprise, but in a good way. In the end it's the inventiveness and the way Woodrell chooses to balance the light with the dark that marks this as not just another entertaining genre read for me, that elevates his every work in to must read territory, a writer with great skill who isn't afraid to use it.
They started with enthusiasm and rapidly ran out of steam, only remembering their task in fits and starts as the book progresses. I like to think that the story was so engrossing that they completely forgot that they were reading it for homework and just steamed through it as I did. I shall now share a sample of the words chosen by our mystery user of black pen as it's a good example of what Woodrell does best I feel.
"last-call Lotharios from along the Redneck Riviera"
"Europe loves ballads of amore and shitty luck and am I ever he thrush for them!"
"like a precociously forlorn honky-tonker."
"the stark moral to a cautionary homily he'd chosen to ignore."
"a tangle of Appalachian underbrush in it...about five and a half feet of condensed malevolence."
But by the time my favourite piece of description came around the pen had been lost and for those of us grown accustomed to having the good bits pointed out to us it could quite easily have been missed.
"John Smith had the complete barnyard of personal characteristics: ox-sized, goose-necked, cow-eyed, a hog gut, probably mule-headed, and clearly goaty of appetite. His hair worn in the style of an early Beatle."
This early example of the man's work is slighter than the remarkably dark, deep and far reaching literature of Winter's Bone, in fact it is much closer to a disposable piece of genre fiction than I expected the mind behind Woe To Live On capable of, but as the above quotes hopefully demonstrate it's still a work of a man capable of evoking sense of place and people with a flair for entertaining sentence construction.
There's a sense of inevitability about the whole thing which underpins the reconnection of an estranged family, giving it all a bittersweet feeling, but that's not to suggest there's anything obvious about the last few weeks in the life of John X. Shade; simply that when A happens in the first couple of pages, Z is the clear outcome in the final pages. Everything in between is a nice surprise, and in the case of Lunch Pumphrey's encounter with a motel prostitute a quite horrible surprise, but in a good way. In the end it's the inventiveness and the way Woodrell chooses to balance the light with the dark that marks this as not just another entertaining genre read for me, that elevates his every work in to must read territory, a writer with great skill who isn't afraid to use it.
May 9, 2010
The Ones You Do (the title from a bit of profane philosophy from one of the characters) is the finale of Woodrell’s St. Bruno or Shade family trilogy. These are wild, comic tales set in the steamy, corrupt bayou town of St. Bruno with style between Damyon Runyon and Elmore Leonard, with low rent lives, atmosphere, almost too clever dialogue, stupid criminals, and a portrait of southern life. This one has some maturity as it rotates on the long departed patriarch John x Shade summing up of his life and being forced for the first time in his life as a pool hall hustler and ladies man to take some responsibility and maybe gain a little redemption. Also, the streak of mayhem that the sociopath, mass murderer, and force of unstoppable evil Lunch Pumphrey (love, love the name!) cuts through the novel is darker than anything in the series. These elements make this the best of the St. Bruno books and a fitting conclusion to the trilogy.
November 30, 2014
The last of the bayou trilogy, more sentimental then the rest, still fun just not at the same high level as the first two.
Want to read
September 30, 2019Synopsis: Rene's father, John X. Shade, has come back to St. Bruno, Louisiana. Broke and boozed-out, he wants more than an ordinary reunion.
August 12, 2021
I’m not sure which in this trilogy is my favorite but this one definitely had some of my favorite moments. It also has one of the most messed up villains I’ve ever come across in fiction. I really enjoyed this series and am sad to see it come to an end.
August 2, 2013
This is the last book in the Bayou Trilogy and in Woodrell's career up to this point he had only written one book so far that was not in this series, A Woe to Live On, an historical fiction western set during the Civil War. Since I've read all these books and others I feel confidant in saying this was Woodrell's first book that, while not set in the Ozarks, does have the classic southern Gothic noir feel of his later more famous titles. Rene Shade, cop, was the star of the first two books but he is only a minor character in the finale. Rene is on suspension and his future is left in limbo yet as a reader one can try to determine what they think he will do. He is a complex character who loves being a policeman, is bound by honour both at work and home and this is why he may no longer be able to go back to being a policeman. The main character of this book is John X. Shade, long time deadbeat father of the Shade brothers. The 70yo man comes back home for the first time since he left his little family, with him is his 14yo daughter after his 27yo (I think) wife leaves him holding the bag for her crime of stealing a local kingpin's money. John knows the man will be after him so he makes a desperate attempt to lose him and set his life to rights at the same time. A wonderful character study of a classic type of man. Born poor, a wrong-side-of-the-tracks kid who had one thing going for him (his looks), he causes a storm with his antics, gets two girls pregnant at the same time so marries the youngest, then lives the life of a professional gambler and womanizer, leaving discarded people along the way. When he comes back to St. Bruno he has to face up to his past, while his past is haunted by his presence and his present runs him down. A startling ending and by far the best book in the trilogy. Woodrell's writing is ripe at this point for his Ozark themed books which would follow this one.
December 23, 2014
As I worked my way through this trilogy I felt it got worse and then much better. Woodrell's strengths seems to me to be character and language. This book's plot became increasingly less important and the dance of characters became the whole story, the language the music they kept step to.
August 16, 2025
I found The Ones You Do a bit hard to pin down. On the surface, it feels like a series of loosely connected stories rather than one clear throughline, which made it difficult for me to follow the main gist of the novel. Woodrell’s writing, however, is undoubtedly strong—his language has real grit and rhythm, even when I didn’t always understand the dialogue. At times, the conversations seemed to be about things outside my own frame of reference, which left me feeling slightly on the outside of the world he created.
As for the characters, Renee Shade stood out as a basically positive presence, but I also felt he came across a little weak, still living in the shadow of his father, John X (who also appeared in the earlier books of this trilogy). Certain moments of tension worked really well—the scene where Lunch takes John and Mary Smith in the car, for instance, was gripping. But in other places, the story seemed to meander, dwelling on details that didn’t feel like they pushed the narrative forward.
Overall, it reads as a sort-of crime novel, but with a tendency to wander into other genres or tones. For me, that mix sometimes diluted the impact of the story, even though Woodrell’s prose and sense of atmosphere remain impressive. I’d call this more of a crime novel with leanings into other genres. Interesting in places, but uneven—hence my three stars.
As for the characters, Renee Shade stood out as a basically positive presence, but I also felt he came across a little weak, still living in the shadow of his father, John X (who also appeared in the earlier books of this trilogy). Certain moments of tension worked really well—the scene where Lunch takes John and Mary Smith in the car, for instance, was gripping. But in other places, the story seemed to meander, dwelling on details that didn’t feel like they pushed the narrative forward.
Overall, it reads as a sort-of crime novel, but with a tendency to wander into other genres or tones. For me, that mix sometimes diluted the impact of the story, even though Woodrell’s prose and sense of atmosphere remain impressive. I’d call this more of a crime novel with leanings into other genres. Interesting in places, but uneven—hence my three stars.
October 4, 2022
4/5 Very Good.
Probably not the end of to the trilogy I was expecting as the Rene Shade very much takes a back seat to a character talked about in previous books, his estranged Father John X. Shade.
With much less of a spotlight on the crime and much more on the family, Daniel Woodrell closes the trilogy bin an enjoyable way. I’ve become much engrossed in the happenings of St Bruno and Rene Shade and I do feel like the trilogy ends in a place I’m happy.
I’ll read much more from Daniel Woodrell. An excellent writer.
Probably not the end of to the trilogy I was expecting as the Rene Shade very much takes a back seat to a character talked about in previous books, his estranged Father John X. Shade.
With much less of a spotlight on the crime and much more on the family, Daniel Woodrell closes the trilogy bin an enjoyable way. I’ve become much engrossed in the happenings of St Bruno and Rene Shade and I do feel like the trilogy ends in a place I’m happy.
I’ll read much more from Daniel Woodrell. An excellent writer.
May 8, 2017
Last book in the Rene trilogy, though we barely get to see our beloved main character. This instead is the story of his father, as the Shade boys reunite to deal with a sociopath. This is a frustrating story at times, where the plot seems to meander, but the characters still evoke so much pleasure I easily overlooked the lack of a conventional story. I hope there are more stories down the pike for Rene.
March 14, 2020
Four and a half. This was my favorite of the Bayou Trilogy if only because it focused more on the derelict periphery of Frogtown as opposed to the first two that were more police procedurals. Really entertaining and well-written.
June 4, 2017
From the crooks point of view...
August 15, 2017
fun southern noire
December 14, 2018
Good conclusion to the trilogy
March 26, 2020
Final book of the trilogy is most character-driven and meandering.
November 4, 2021
3rd book in The Bayou Trilogy. Excellent series with fantastic writing.
May 16, 2022
that dog won't hunt
January 22, 2023
Graduate of the Iowa Writer's School
Great writer: a rather sordid tale of drugs, mirder & people just getting by.
I must read more of his work!
Great writer: a rather sordid tale of drugs, mirder & people just getting by.
I must read more of his work!
April 23, 2023
I thought Little Mister was good but this is even better.
November 16, 2023
Short on plot, long on character and atmosphere. In some ways the best writing of the trilogy but his sex scenes are still dreadful.
July 30, 2016
"The Ones You Do" is an engaging read by Daniel Woodrell, and the last in the "Bayou Trilogy" dealing with the Slade family. Previous books have put their focus on Rene Slade, a lawman from a a well, shady, family with a lot of history, some good, some bad. This time around, the main character is Shade's father, John X. Slade. He begins the book out of town, but some events take place that cause him to hit the road with his young daughter, and the book begins.
The book is entertaining throughout, but the plot is a bit unfocused. After sticking with John X. for a while, Woodrell switches the scenery to deal with the man who is chasing after John X., Lunch Pumphrey. Once we travel with Lunch for a bit, the scene shifts yet again to a widower who is angry about the past. It doesn't really detract from the book, but it a change from Woodrell's other work which advances the plot in a driving sort of way. This is more of a casual stroll through the country.
The characters are all just plain great. Lunch Pumphrey and the couple that he meets in a city by a river couldn't have been done better. John X is a striking character as is the widower and many others along the way. At many points I wondered if the book was ever going to "go" anywhere, but didn't really care that much, simply because I was enjoying the dialogue and the characters.
This ends up being an odd, but very enjoyable book. Not much is done with Rene Shade, which is a surprise. There are more like four or five sub-plots in the book, none all that connected to the others, but they are all entertaining and fun. In "The Ones You Do", Daniel Woodrell takes us wandering in the country to meet a bunch of colorful characters. Most of the time we don't go anywhere in particular, but the meandering is so enjoyable we don't care.
The book is entertaining throughout, but the plot is a bit unfocused. After sticking with John X. for a while, Woodrell switches the scenery to deal with the man who is chasing after John X., Lunch Pumphrey. Once we travel with Lunch for a bit, the scene shifts yet again to a widower who is angry about the past. It doesn't really detract from the book, but it a change from Woodrell's other work which advances the plot in a driving sort of way. This is more of a casual stroll through the country.
The characters are all just plain great. Lunch Pumphrey and the couple that he meets in a city by a river couldn't have been done better. John X is a striking character as is the widower and many others along the way. At many points I wondered if the book was ever going to "go" anywhere, but didn't really care that much, simply because I was enjoying the dialogue and the characters.
This ends up being an odd, but very enjoyable book. Not much is done with Rene Shade, which is a surprise. There are more like four or five sub-plots in the book, none all that connected to the others, but they are all entertaining and fun. In "The Ones You Do", Daniel Woodrell takes us wandering in the country to meet a bunch of colorful characters. Most of the time we don't go anywhere in particular, but the meandering is so enjoyable we don't care.
September 18, 2016
The third book in The Bayou Trilogy reads less like the first two crime related, intense volumes, and more like a stand alone novel about the Shade family. That being said, it still sports one of the crazier killers of the series and satisfies with a tightly tied up ending for the trilogy.
August 22, 2013
This book is actually a bit of a mess, which isn't to say I didn't like aspects of it. I complained in my mini-review of Muscle for the Wing that one of the series' flaws was that its protagonist, Rene Shade, wasn't that interesting. Well, Woodrell seems to have felt the same as he's sidelined Rene here in the final installment. Rene's on suspension from the cops for his actions during the aforementioned novel, and aside from some stuff about his erectile dysfunction with his girlfriend, Rene barely features. Instead, the plot focuses on Rene's father, John X. Shade, who has been mentioned in the previous books but never featured. Shade Snr is a bad sort: a boozer, a womaniser and a thief. This time he's crossed a psychotic murder with the unlikely name of Lunch, and what follows is a situation that reminded me a little of that in Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. The difference is that where McCarthy's writing has a certain gravitas, Woodrell (here anyway) just seems to be meandering along. The plot is unfocused and prone to detouring down interesting but ultimately diversionary lines. It's as though Woodrell himself had by this point become dissatisfied with the project he'd undertaken in the Bayou novels. His work, here, is becoming more literary and less conventional, genre-fiction wise. That's fine, because the work that was to follow from this writer ended up being much more assured and comfortable in its own skin than The Ones You Do.
February 19, 2025
Words to live by: “It’s never the ones you do that you regret; it’s the ones you don’t.”
If you like a good, darkly-humorous, Southern cracker story with irresistably likeable characters (and they ARE characters), this might be your ticket. It's the (end of the) story of John X. Shade, a past-his-prime pool shark, hustler, and ladies' man who, with his 10-year old goth daughter Etta (who has a 30-year old worldview), is trying to evade a psychopathic killer named Lunch (yeah, Lunch - the nicknames alone make this book worth reading) because John X's current wife - the 'Bama Butterfly - skipped town to pursue a singing career with $47k of Lunch's money. Trust me - it's a page-turner despite numerous side excursions with John X's first wife (14 when they were married, not 12 - "there's a difference"), his three sons ( an assistant DA, a suspended cop, and the owner of Enoch's Ribs and Lounge), and assorted small-town characters who (if you live in a small town) are uncomfortably recognizable. But I came out with a lot of respect for John X's integrity, Etta's faith in her father, and the enduring faith (and endurance) of the long-suffering women. Humorous, poignant, and incisive - plus very well-written. A thoroughly enjoyable read as a standalone, but it's actually the third in a "bayou trilogy".
If you like a good, darkly-humorous, Southern cracker story with irresistably likeable characters (and they ARE characters), this might be your ticket. It's the (end of the) story of John X. Shade, a past-his-prime pool shark, hustler, and ladies' man who, with his 10-year old goth daughter Etta (who has a 30-year old worldview), is trying to evade a psychopathic killer named Lunch (yeah, Lunch - the nicknames alone make this book worth reading) because John X's current wife - the 'Bama Butterfly - skipped town to pursue a singing career with $47k of Lunch's money. Trust me - it's a page-turner despite numerous side excursions with John X's first wife (14 when they were married, not 12 - "there's a difference"), his three sons ( an assistant DA, a suspended cop, and the owner of Enoch's Ribs and Lounge), and assorted small-town characters who (if you live in a small town) are uncomfortably recognizable. But I came out with a lot of respect for John X's integrity, Etta's faith in her father, and the enduring faith (and endurance) of the long-suffering women. Humorous, poignant, and incisive - plus very well-written. A thoroughly enjoyable read as a standalone, but it's actually the third in a "bayou trilogy".
January 7, 2013
Book three in Daniel Woodrell's Bayou Trilogy was considerably different from the first two books. The Ones You Do was not a crime novel like the first two books in the trilogy. Since Detective Rene Shade was suspended from the St. Bruno police department, this book had nothing to do with the police or the redneck mafia that runs the criminal underground of St. Bruno. Instead, this book introduces you to the mysterious John X Shade who is the father of Rene, Tip, and Francois Shade. In the previous novels, he had only been referred to in passing. John X barrels into St. Bruno on the run from another criminal and brings his teenage daughter with him. Instead of being a crime novel, this was more of a character study in family dynamics as Tip and Rene try to renew their relationship with John X and get to know their half sister. I enjoyed reading this novel, even though it was very different from the rest of the trilogy. The only issue I have with this book, is that the ending was very anticlimatic. Much like the first two books, The Ones You Do was a very quick and entertaining read.
June 18, 2016
Well, they get better...slightly.
Having finished this, the third of the Bayou Trilogy, I was disappointed. In terms of writing, this was certainly the strongest of the series. Woodrell started to really polish his style in this one, and it was compulsively readable. And in terms of character development, John X. Shade appears...who has a bit of depth, an interesting back story and is written with humor, regret, and pain. He becomes the stand-out character of the series and is far more interesting than Rene Shade, who here is relegated to a supporting part.
However, the good is ultimately undone by the bad. We face what I feel is yet another abrupt conclusion; in fact when I turned to the last page, I was startled and flipped back to make sure I hadn't skipped a page or two.
I'd have to chalk this book, and the whole series for that matter, as not worth the time. That pains me to say since I enjoy Woodrell's later books so much. For my money, readers should start with "Give Us A Kiss" and enjoy the writer he became, not the novels where he was cutting his teeth.
Having finished this, the third of the Bayou Trilogy, I was disappointed. In terms of writing, this was certainly the strongest of the series. Woodrell started to really polish his style in this one, and it was compulsively readable. And in terms of character development, John X. Shade appears...who has a bit of depth, an interesting back story and is written with humor, regret, and pain. He becomes the stand-out character of the series and is far more interesting than Rene Shade, who here is relegated to a supporting part.
However, the good is ultimately undone by the bad. We face what I feel is yet another abrupt conclusion; in fact when I turned to the last page, I was startled and flipped back to make sure I hadn't skipped a page or two.
I'd have to chalk this book, and the whole series for that matter, as not worth the time. That pains me to say since I enjoy Woodrell's later books so much. For my money, readers should start with "Give Us A Kiss" and enjoy the writer he became, not the novels where he was cutting his teeth.
February 1, 2022
When ya go, ya go with a bang; the bang with which this series ought to finish is the sound of the coffin lid that signals a destination in the journey. Ultimately, THE ONES YOU DO is about redemption. It's about makin' right, doing good, and inevitably, coming home.
This third and final installment in the Bayou Trilogy finds the entire cast of characters milling about St. Bruno, some hot and steamy miles north of Naw-lins. The events that led them here (in the previous two entries) are not as important as what they aim to do with their time in this 224 caper.
As it turns out, this tome's daddy is an alligator, its mammy a hurricane, eats gunpowder for breakfast and whips whole armies. Like a famed river, THE ONES YOU DO is too wide and the current too strong to just dip in your toes. Wade right in and get knee deep in Bayou swamp or it'll eat your Lunch.
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