Final Heat (First Edition)

Snake Ripley, trapped in Rockton, Mississippi, taking care of his ailing father and retarded brother, finds a soulmate in Truly Crawford, a spoiled southern debutante, and the combined rage of the couple scars the entire town

Readers who loved Williams's deftly orchestrated, seriocomic earlier novels, including All the Western Stars and Perfect Timing , will likely be dismayed by the heavy-handed gothic melodrama presented here. An unrelenting heat wave in the north central Mississippi town of Rockton fuels the fury and frustration of Snake Ripley, whose work in the family gas station supports his drunken father and his beloved, brain-damaged brother, Leslie. Snake's dreams of escape are encouraged by Truly Crawford, his conscienceless, over-privileged girlfriend, only daughter of a swaggering, bigoted father and a mother who paints still lifes in the style of whichever master whose biography she is reading at the time. Snake and Truly rob a reputedly wealthy old woman and in the process kill her; shortly afterward, Snake's father decides to right some of the wrongs of his life and kills four other people. The manhunt closes in on Snake, who flees into the nearby Black Swamp with Truly and Leslie, followed by his father, who is seeking his final victim, but the male citizenry of Rockton, led by Truly's father, is close behind. Assorted coincidences, unprepared-for betrayals, inexplicable motivations and a hard-to-credit deus ex machina are among the elements giving Williams's latest a two-dimensional, cartoon quality. Only the anguished, rageful Snake and Leslie, whose tenuous connections to reality diminish steadily, are portrayed with the grace, affection and depth Williams has demonstrated previously.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A violent family saga set in redneck Mississippi--with steamy Tennessee Williams-like southerners who are convincing only when the author (Perfect Timing, p. 435; etc.) remembers to keep his tongue firmly in his cheek--and that's not often enough. At 24, Snake Ripley, from Rockton, is trapped in a land of pines and red moons because his brother, Leslie, is retarded (though Leslie's also a kind of religious idiot savant) and because his father, Harry, is ailing with a bad heart. Meanwhile, Snake runs the family garage and trysts with Truly Crawford, the 22-year- old daughter of Junior, the town's wealthiest man. Truly's spoiled to death, and her mother, Ada--who provides some comic relief when the soap-opera fur begins to fly--fancies herself an artist in the manner of van Gogh. In serviceable prose, Williams evokes a place where nearly everyone is repressing a great deal of violence--until at last it breaks loose: Snake and Truly decide to rob the mansion of an old woman, who confronts them with a gun and wounds Snake, whereupon he blows her away; Harry satisfies his own blood-lust by going to the house of a Dr. Owens and killing the doctor, his brother, and his wife; then Harry goes after Snake. (Yes, it's one of those books.) By now, the town's in an uproar, with Sheriff Reuben going to all ends to solve the murders. They solve themselves, however, when Snake and Harry try to eliminate each other, and everyone goes running into the swamps. Snake kills Harry--or maybe Harry has a fatal heart attack moments before the bullets hit him--and the cops blow Snake away while Truly pretends she's been kidnapped and walks off in Junior's arms, so to speak. This time out, Williams is not able to find the language that might turn such a tale into art. Too often, it's unintentionally laughable. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.