WE BEGIN AT THE END by Chris Whitaker

Sissy Radley has been dead for thirty years after a she was hit by a car the age of seven.  The drunk driver was 15-year-old Vincent King, who is now being released from prison.  His childhood friend Walker is now a beaten-down cop battling Parkinson’s—a disease that he struggles to hide in order to keep his job.  Walker also tries to look out for two unfortunate children, 13-year-old Duchess and her 6-year-old brother Robin.  Their irresponsible mother is Star Radley, Sissy’s sister and Vincent’s old girlfriend, who herself is murdered early in the novel.  Vincent calls the cops from the scene and immediately becomes the only suspect, but the author throws one red herring after another our way, as well as Walker’s, as he tracks down every clue that might exonerate Vincent.  However, this is not a legal thriller, and, although a murder mystery--or more than one, actually--is at the heart of the plot, this novel is much more.  The tragedies that befall Duchess and Robin are almost too heartbreaking to bear, despite the hilarious spate of curse words that Duchess occasionally hurls that sometimes result in not-so-hilarious consequences.  One problem with this book, though, is the writing style, with gaps in sentences that I sometimes found difficult to bridge, especially at the beginning before I became accustomed to it.  Also, Duchess proudly brands herself an outlaw, and her almost ad nauseam proclamation of this avocation not only becomes annoying but also makes her seem much younger than she is.  What ultimately stands out in this novel is the theme of fierce loyalty, particularly Walker’s loyalty to Vincent and Duchess’s to Robin, so that love and loyalty become almost interchangeable.