Free

by Todd Komarnicki

His name is Jefferson Alexander Freeman, but the only name he answers to is Free. Thirty and homeless, he says he was born at seventeen, the day he first hit the streets of the Big Easy. Everything before is a blur. Things blur now, too, ever since he took a headfirst dive through a stained-glass window at St. Patrick's Cathedral. The colored shards still swim in his head, keeping company with stranger things: Hallucinations. Voices. Abandoned memories. In the grimy back room of Wong's Exotic Dance Club, the French Quarter dive that is his haunt of choice, Free makes a startling discovery: the body of a Chinese immigrant, with two perfect bullet holes in his chest, and a red fleur-de-lis tattoo on his shoulder blade. And then a few days later, in the alley behind Wong's, there is another dead man, also Chinese, bearing the same tattoo. Intrigued and disturbed, Free knows only that evil is dangerously close - to him, to Wong's, and to Felulah Matin, the sweet and melancholy stripper who may be his only escape. Free begins to investigate the murders on his own, but when a third killing pushes dread and confusion past the limit, he goes to the police. Free joins forces with Detective Agatha Li to unravel the multilayered mystery of the murders - as well as the darker mystery within Free himself. Together, they embark on a harrowing journey from the deadly back streets of New Orleans, to the shrouded underworld of Hong Kong, to a place of beautiful and terrifying intimacy between them. And as the bodies mount, and the feverish voices rage inside his head, Free becomes less and less certain that he is discovering the bodies, and more and more afraid that he may be the one pulling the trigger. Scorchingly immediate and nightmare-vivid, Free is a strikingly original novel: an edge-of-the-seat suspense thriller, a deeply unconventional love story, and a searing exploration of the depths of the human soul.

273 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1993

Reviews

[Adam O'Leary · Rating 1 out of 5]

A nihilistic tramp engages in a series of implausible action sequences alongside a host of two dimensional characters, with whom he engages in wooden dialogue. The plot is highly contrived and reading this book is only made entertaining by stumbling upon strange metaphors about shooting unicorns and the like. Komarnicki attempts to use the crime thriller genre to explore existential philosophy à la Paul Auster, but his lack of finesse and addiction to shoot em up scenes makes his attempt look amateur.

[Karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book started out as hard to put down and pretty attention getting. I5t was different and I like that. But by 1/2 way through it became so tedious and silly I skipped a lot and really did not even want to finish it. Finally, I skipped to the end and found the ending was not that great either.