A Streetcar Named Despair

A Streetcar Named Despair

By LISA SCOTTOLINE
Published: September 8, 2009

“Shake the Devil Off” opens with the suicide of Zackery Bowen, an Iraq war veteran who ended his life in 2006 by leaping from a roof in the French Quarter. In Bowen’s pocket, the New Orleans police found his dog tags, keys and a note that read: “I had to take my own life to pay for the one I took. If you send a patrol to 826 N. Rampart you will find the dismembered corpse of my girlfriend Addie in the oven, on the stove and in the fridge along with full documentation on the both of us and a full signed confession from myself.”

The police went to the couple’s apartment, where they discovered that Bowen had murdered Addie Hall more than a week earlier, then baked her legs in a tinfoil pan, packed her torso in the refrigerator and boiled her head, hands and feet in pots. Yet as soon as the author, Ethan Brown, finishes recounting these horrific details, his first question is: “Why was Zackery Bowen, a former Army sergeant, a veteran of two wars (Kosovo and Iraq), and a beloved bartender and ­deliveryman in the French Quarter, in such unimaginably deep emotional pain?”
read more here
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/books/review/Scottoline-t.html?_r=1