PositiveMemphis FlyerTwenty years on from when I first began reading Russo, a lot of water has gone under the bridge. The world has become increasingly smaller and the tragedies of it more readily accessible, so that a storyteller today might feel the need to emphasize the violence and ugliness of their fictional world to hold a reader's attention. The water in Bath has run cold. While it's cozy, if not cursed, a darkness has fallen on the streets and seeps into Russo's story in a way that wasn't there in 1993. The Rust-Belt town was never a Disneyland by any means, but the stain of violence was simply touched upon, what happened behind closed doors an underlying motive for the psyche of the characters. Today, that stain is unwashable and the violence in-your-face. It can be difficult to read, but read we do because Russo also knows justice and how to deliver it.
