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About the book:
In 1995, Kevin Fortuna and Joey Fortuna decided to write a novel which would be their attempt to explain through fiction a phenomenon they had witnessed in Washington, D.C. and in New Orleans, LA. In both of those cities, a cycle of crime and paranoia had taken root. People were being killed in record numbers and a kind of carnival glee had seemingly taken hold of the killers. Slaughter had ceased to be simply a necessary byproduct of the narcotics trade. Killings were beginning to take place for their own sake. The most significant parallel between these two cities were the strict and impassable lines drawn between the economic classes. Washington, DC in those days was recovering from Marion Barry and the end-result of the attrition of all of the hope and talent that he had brought to the office of Mayor. His adminstration had become infested with yes-men and women who had surrounded Barry with a climate of corruptive solicitude. In New Orleans, giant billboards were being erected, black lettering on white backgrounds, that simply read: "Thou shalt not kill." A basic human tenet was being ignored. Kevin Fortuna and Joey Fortuna wrote this book as a way of trying to tease out some pattern or meaning to the violence, and to understand something about the organic nature of mayhem. |