Review by Ian Keogh
Just before Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans two detectives are tracking a killer. Curt Delatte’s daughter has just died, his wife has filed for divorce and his subsequent absence from work almost has him sacked. He infuriates his partner Jesse Matthews with his uncanny instinct for locating evidence, yet Matthews knows Delatte’s value to the force.
Since Katrina, the New Orleans police force has very much been defined as lawless, idle and corrupt via the Treme TV show, but Delatte and Matthews are good police, diligently working the case against a terrifying killer.
Kody Chamberlain doesn’t quite pull off what he intends with Sweets, the title coming from the killer’s habit of leaving them at every crime scene. The dialogue rings true for those only having a small role, the police chief shining at the beginning, but there’s never any sense of the suffering that kept Delatte away from work for so long. It was just a character moment before the police business began. Likewise, for much of the story Matthews only seems there because detectives work in pairs and conversation is required for Delatte to explain himself.
As seen on the sample pages, Chamberlain varies his art. The scratchy, sepia toned pages with ink splatters for added grit are the default, with greyscale variations used for the past. They’re atmospheric and serve the cast well, but jagged cartoon sequences in distinctively contrasting blue aren’t immediately obvious as supplying the youth of the killer the detectives are looking for. A good touch is the weather becoming progressively worse as Katrina nears.
The looming storm provides an imminent deadline for the detectives, working against the clock with the knowledge New Orleans could be evacuated, and while he may steer close to the clichés of detective fiction, Chamberlain never dives completely in. The opening chapter’s foreshadowing is given relevance for the final chapter, but several allusions to coincidence hardly help Chamberlain’s credibility when this is another.
While there’s a commitment to reality with the way the police go about their business, in other respects Chamberlain all too often takes leaps of convenience. Everything slots together, although some readers may be disappointed with an ending that’s not a conclusion, but it’s not quite convincing enough. It leaves Sweets as readable, but never compelling.
