Customer Reviews

Swamp Gas

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's hard to imagine that Swamp Gas is Ms. Paloni's first time out of the gate. Swamp Gas is gut-achingly funny. Lana is such a colorful, loopy character that my interest in her never flagged. Ms. Paloni must make it a serial. Just imagine the heights, and the pathetic depths that Lana and her crew could rise to and fall from. Hollywood take note -- Swamp Gas is made for the big screen (Joan Cusack would be perfect as Lana).

Swamp Gas is a hysterically funny book with characters that conjure wild images in your mind. It's not deep or compelling, but it's not supposed to be! The writing style of Nicole Paolini is intelligent and gripping, yet the characters are outrageous and comical. Jimmy Crouton and Lana Pulaski are so unique, you're actually happy to realize that you know noone to compare them to. This was a great casual read, and an impressive first book. I can't wait for the next.

Great book. Paolini's story is an eccentric trip through the political underpinnings of New Orleans politics. The story reads much like a screenplay, with a descriptive use of language that takes the reader through the life of interesting characters as well as through the landscape (both political and geographic)in which they reside. Worthy of note is Lana Pulaski, the over-assertive protagonist whose "win at all cost" attitude protects her from the motivations of the Louisiana political machine, while creating countless mishaps in the process. Prepare yourself to be entertained by other characters such as Jim Crouton, the crack-head hitman whose affinity for rat-poison is the motivation for an fantastic ending. I would not be surprised to see Paolini's book as a motion picture in the near future. A must read.

First, there was Elmore Leonard, who wrote taut, clean suspense novels and infused them with eccentric characters and crackling dialog to make them both believable and alive.

Leonard's heir, of course, is Carl Hiaasen, who amped the eccentricity up to downright wacky, continued the great dialog and remembered to keep one sympathetic character, preferably the protagonist, to which he could anchor the story and for which the reader could keep his fingers crossed that everything was going to turn out okay.

Just as Leonard spawned imitators, Hiaasen has his copycats, too, cats like Nicole Paolini. The problem with this, of course, is that once you've pushed the envelope as wide as Hiaasen has, there's nothing left to do but rip it up. And rip it up is what Paolini does with her first novel, "Swamp Gas".

"Swamp Gas" is the story of a Polish social group who decides to back a Polish-American political candidate in order to increase their presence in New Orleans. The candidate they select is Lana Pulaski, an ambulance-chasing attorney who has a very lovely photograph on the back of the New Orleans phone directory. The elected office she wants is Attorney General. And she'll do anything to get it, including marrying an influential, but ancient and feeble, old judge and turning it into a political event, embarrasing herself and breaking the old fellow's heart. Oh! Hee hee! My sides, they're aching...

At the same time, Lana is hired by the wife of a man accused of a twenty-year old murder, one that seems to have something to do with a land-lease given to a chemical plant. Lana takes the case, but never has the chance to work on it properly, as her client is murdered only a few days later.

Thrown into the mix is a very old murder, typical Louisiana "business as usual" politics, a washed-up journalist, who just might have the story of his career, head-case hitman Jimmy Crouton who couldn't whack someone properly if they were already dead, crooked judge L'Enfant and his granddaughter, Scarlett, who is actually kind of sweet and the only person in the novel deserving any respect or redemption.

It is my own admitted prejudice that I do not like anti-heroes. I don't mind when heroes are flawed, but basically good, but when a truly hateful person is cast as the central character in a book, I find myself at a loss. Lana Pulaski is admittedly a good attorney and the type to do anything to win a case for her clients. But the way she chews up and spits out the people in this novel is like watching a snake chow down on a family of white mice.

The outrageous character in this book is Jimmy Crouton, who somehow sucked the life out of every scene he was in. Smoking crack and snorting methamphetamine to gain the courage to commit murder, he is a voracious and ridiculous cousin to the odd, battered people found in Hiaasen novels, one who at no point seems to have a purpose or truly deserve what happens to him.

I didn't hate this book, but I wouldn't recommend it, either.

This is a very, very funny book. Watch Lana Pulaski, statuesque ambulance chaser, enter the bayou to run for attorney general. Story and characters are just too loopy for words. Read this satire, and laugh for days.

The main character in this book is hysterical. For Lana alone this book should get 5 stars. From her spiked heels to her huge red hair she is a riot. The other characters seem to pale by comparison (and who wouldn't when held up next to the flashy Lana?) Unfortunately, the plot seems to pale as well. If as much thought had been put into the story as was put into the character devlopment this would have been a great book instead of one I would say is just so-so. I would love to see lana reappear in another novel with a better story.