As a New Orleans resident, I was just as fascinated/sickened by the Zack/Addie murder when it first hit the news here. It was probably the same fascination that Ethan Brown felt, which was enough to result in him moving here and writing this book. Although Mr. Brown obviously has done a lot of research for this book, I simply was not happy with his results and conclusions, and feel he was way off the mark in some places. In the end, the book winds up being more of a testament to a questionable lifestyle led by some people here which could only be summed up as a New Orleans fantasy. Zack Bowen and Addie Hall felt that they were doing something good for the city by staying in the French Quarter after Katrina as "holdouts", appearing in the New York Times and other major papers, but in reality they were just living out their New Orleans fantasy - staying wasted and working as little as possible, while in other sections of town, people were drowning and dying in their attics. Their statement of disregarding orders to evacuate and being maverick holdouts in the city meant nothing, and accomplished nothing.
This book spends far too much time in Iraq. Half the book takes place during Zack's days in the service, in Kosovo and Iraq; the author is unable to really draw clear lines between Zack's experiences and the murder he commits later in the story. It's speculation to say that undiagnosed PTSD is what caused Zack to murder Addie Hall, and Ethan Brown doesn't seem to factor in other important things such as Zack being drunk most of the time; his secret homosexuality (which is glossed over in the book and never examined as a reason for his self-esteem issues); and the details of Addie's abuse of him. We also learn very little of Addie's background, other than she seemed to drift here from North Carolina, had an abusive childhood, and was pretty much known around town as a volatile psycho-drunk. I wanted to know much more about her, but little is found out, and Brown doesn't dig deep enough.
The book concludes that Zack was driven to murder by a combination of PTSD, rejection, and the effects of his volatile, abusive relationship. It's also just as possible that Zack was drunk as a skunk, Addie was cutting him down over his gay trysts, and he lost control for that fateful moment, strangling her. Who knows? There are no real answers found in this book, which reaches a terrible conclusion by not knowing where to lay the blame for the violence in this city - Ethan Brown just pins the tail on the stereotypical donkeys - Ray Nagin and the NOPD - instead of digging deeper into decades of racism and inequality.
Zack Bowen and Addie Hall come across as two would-be hipsters who didn't have the intelligence or maturity to know what they were really dealing with in this tough, long-suffering city - it was more important to pose themselves as bar scene heros by refusing to leave the city after Katrina, and when the fun was over, the drugs, booze, and their own immaturity created a perfect storm that wound up in murder. In some strange way, they seem to deserve each other. To Bowen and Hall, New Orleans was just a drunken fantasy playground; they had no appreciation for its history and no respect for its dangers.
