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Felicia
Someone’s about to rip off a sleepy little Louisiana town! Chuck’s gang of truckers are geared for looting. When Tom masterminds a false hurricane alert…When sheriff Boshardt orders an evacuation of the town…When Chuck moves in to strip the town clean…Their cool caper escalates into a devastating triple-cross that rips the rooftops off everything from Miami to New Orleans—and nothing—no one will ever be the same!
270 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1976
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 8, 2023
As a big fan of Effinger's science fiction works, I looked forward to exploring some of his earlier, non science fiction, such as Felicia, which was first published in 1978. While a decent thriller of a sort, Felicia really lacked the imagination and just plain cleverness of his Marid Audrian series, which is one of my all time favorites.
Felicia is set in rural Louisiana on the Gulf coast in a parish with maybe 20,000 people, including a few towns above 1000. Our main protagonist is the sheriff of the parish, but Effinger builds up quite a supporting cast for such a slim novel. The gist: a hurricane-- aptly named Felicia-- is bearing down on the town/parish. Alongside the development of this, some crazy type of caper is going on, where some truckers, under the direction of a mysterious figure in Miami, plan on looting the coastal town just before the hurricane hits. Unfortunately, this mini blurb makes this sound pretty exciting, which this novel was not.
For about 3/4 of the novel, Effinger gives us one rather pathetic character after another whiling their way through life in the parish. I did like the elucidation on Cajun culture, etc., but we spent a lot of time with the sheriff's wife (a notorious floozy), the drugged out local TV weatherman and his bored wife, watching life go by, an outsider from Ohio passing through looking for work., etc. Effinger lost me with the minutiae and the actual hurricane as the denouement was fitting but anticlimatic. So, an interesting look at Cajun life in the 1970s, but a pretty boring thriller. 2 bowls of gumbo.
Felicia is set in rural Louisiana on the Gulf coast in a parish with maybe 20,000 people, including a few towns above 1000. Our main protagonist is the sheriff of the parish, but Effinger builds up quite a supporting cast for such a slim novel. The gist: a hurricane-- aptly named Felicia-- is bearing down on the town/parish. Alongside the development of this, some crazy type of caper is going on, where some truckers, under the direction of a mysterious figure in Miami, plan on looting the coastal town just before the hurricane hits. Unfortunately, this mini blurb makes this sound pretty exciting, which this novel was not.
For about 3/4 of the novel, Effinger gives us one rather pathetic character after another whiling their way through life in the parish. I did like the elucidation on Cajun culture, etc., but we spent a lot of time with the sheriff's wife (a notorious floozy), the drugged out local TV weatherman and his bored wife, watching life go by, an outsider from Ohio passing through looking for work., etc. Effinger lost me with the minutiae and the actual hurricane as the denouement was fitting but anticlimatic. So, an interesting look at Cajun life in the 1970s, but a pretty boring thriller. 2 bowls of gumbo.
June 21, 2013
Long before Katrina, George Alec Effinger wrote this nice, tight little crime drama/suspense thriller featuring truckers and snakes and his beloved city of New Orleans and the titular hurricane. Known almost exclusively for his science fiction, Effinger here showed that he could produce a successful mainstream adventure.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews