I know it's pretty quiet here but I thought I'd post a review that I
wrote after I read Poppy Z Brite's spin on The Crow.

Posted from my livejournal page...

Title: The Crow: The Lazarus Heart
Author: Poppy Z Brite
Publisher: HarperEntertainment 1998
Rating: Three out of five.

I'm a big fan of Poppy Z Brite. I admit it. If there are writers out
there who inspire me to write, she's one of them. I happen to be a fan
of The Crow as well and, like many kids back in the mid 90s, first
heard about the comic book character after watching the movie with
ill-fated Brandon Lee in it.

So, of course, it was impossible for me to resist picking up this
book. Poppy Z's prose is lush, dark and evocative, bringing New
Orleans to life with words that taste like the sound of their colours.
She's big on descriptions and you can almost imagine that you are
walking those rain-soaked streets with her characters.

In typical Poppy Z style, I don't think there's a single straight
character in this entire novel. We follow the story of photographer
Jared Poe, who is murdered while on death row. He's in the lock-up
because he was convicted of brutally murdering his lover, Benjamin.
The crow brings him back from the dead to avenge Benny but, for some
reason, the bird is unable to lead Jared directly to the man
responsible for all the trouble and he spends his time getting even
with the cops and the district attorney who had him convicted.

Jared is aided by Lucrece – Benny's twin sister. In my opinion, she is
one of the stronger characters in the story and I found Poppy Z's
telling of the twin's past to be another tale in itself.

The antagonist, the man who calls himself by the names of rivers, is
utterly relentless and chilling. Poppy had me spellbound by the serial
killer's twisted subjective reality where he single-handedly wages a
genocidal war against the New Orleans GLBIT community. It's sick. It's
disgusting. And, it's utterly fascinating in the same way that you
can't help but look at the scene of a motor vehicle accident while you
drive past.

Why she still bothered sketching out the character of the police
detective assigned to investigate the murders is beyond me. Detective
Frank Gray (also gay) plays a minor role in the story but, in my
opinion, bogs down the plot because he serves no real purpose other
than to add his memories to the story of the serial killer's murders.

It's the plot of this novel that disappointed me the most. I enjoyed
Poppy's style of writing. I loved some of her characters, especially
Lucrece. I felt that there was all this build-up to hunting down the
killer but when it came to the final climax, it was anything but that.
And, for fear of spoiling it for you, the ending was too obvious. I
immediately knew what was going to happen after certain events
transpired. The storyline is murky and I feel that Poppy is being too
clever with her words, dwelling in her characters' memories rather
than having the story unfold and move forward. I enjoyed the
back-story but that was about it. I liked the way that Poppy writes a
non-linear tale with stories within stories but it lost its impact
with a weak ending.

The other thing that bugs me is that there are parts of this that are
too derivative of Exquisite Corpse with its obsessive treatment of the
goings on of a serial killer's mind. I still enjoyed this grisly
vivisection of the details, but if you've read the book, you'll
recognise some of the themes that reoccur.

That being said, The Lazarus Heart still makes for entertaining
reading, especially for die-hard Poppy fans.