Galveston by Nic Pizzolatto Review

Roy, a bagman for the mob, gets a hit put on his head the same day he’s diagnosed with cancerous lungs. Escaping the gangsters on his trail, he picks up a young prostitute called Rocky along the way and her kid sister Tiffany, and they hide out in Galveston, Texas. The small group seems bereft of a future – where do they go from here?

Like most people I only picked this novel up because I’m a fan of Nic Pizzolatto’s TV show True Detective (the first season anyway!). I thought Galveston was a pretty decent read but not without its problems.

The book gets off to a cracking start and then basically stops dead once the characters reach Galveston. And that’s the novel’s major flaw: it’s barely got a story. They hide out in some seedy motel, talk, drink, and basically tread water for the largest chunk of the book, and I’d have liked a bit more direction and drive.

There’s also a helluva lot of contrivance at key moments. The reason why Roy’s boss decides to off him is laughably flimsy as is why Roy decides to pick up Rocky and stay with her for most of the book. There’s more, particularly in the final act, but I won’t go into spoilers here.

The characters were compelling though, who’re the real focus anyway in lieu of a plot. Roy and Rocky’s back-and-forths always held my attention despite Roy being your average stoic hard man (think Marv from Frank Miller’s Sin City). Rocky was definitely the best and most complex character though I wasn’t sure what the point was in making her life so damned tragic? As you might expect from the creator of True Detective, the tone is very grim and gritty, almost comically so, but it felt gratuitous to wallow in such over-the-top darkness. It’s possibly an aesthetic choice related to genre – Galveston sounds like a crime novel but it’s really not though it definitely has that hard-boiled noir flavour – or it’s to underline a nihilistic/simplistic message of “Life Is Shit” or something along those lines, but either way it wasn’t impressive.

That said, Pizzolatto’s dialogue is totally convincing. Roy says lines like “Just don’t try to play me, girl. Down that road is nothing good for you” which might sound silly and melodramatic in the hands of a lesser writer but plays perfectly persuasively in the context of Pizzolatto’s story.

The ending is a little rushed but I loved the visual Pizzolatto left us with. As in much of the book, Roy’s actions are absurdly macho but it’s an undeniably memorable closing scene.

The story had its moments here and there but ultimately wasn’t substantive or gripping enough for me. Nic Pizzolatto’s fascination with doomed characters and their morbid plights though was bleakly hypnotic and effortlessly ensnared me, and the writing throughout is high quality. I don’t expect this would appeal to readers outside the writer’s fanbase but it might be worth a look for those fans as we wait for the next season of True Detective!