Follow Here To Purchase Car Tag

 Author:  H. Lee Barnes

ISBN-10: 09844232: ISBN-13: 978-0984423248

At one hundred and twenty eight pages, by bestseller standards, Car Tag is a slim book; a slim book I really liked.

It’s the story of two brothers, Drew and Billy Debecki and their half brother Alex (same mother, different father). The boys lucked out in the parental department - their mother, Arden, a cocktail waitress, deserted by Drew and Billy’s father shortly after their birth, cares little for her sons, her main concern being regular visits to a hair dressing salon and the destructive love she holds for Maury, a card cheat with a violent sadistic streak with whom she has a son, Alex.

 The story is set in the State of Nevada and, as an Australian, I know little about this state’s desert environment or the death row prison facility where much of the action takes place. This didn’t mar my enjoyment of the book. H. Lee Barnes is an award winning writer and it shows. His deceptively simple writing style coupled with the book’s vivid imagery of desert roads and the grim solitude of a death row prison cell absorbed me from page one.

The main theme of the book is Drew’s struggle to gain a stay of execution for his brother, Billy, a confessed cop killer, who has been locked up for thirteen years during which time appeals have been lodged and failed to have his death sentence commuted to life imprisonment. Time is running out for Billy; he’s on a countdown to execution. Drew’s desperately sad aloneness and Billy’s life on death row where everything, including his death are out of his control are finely detailed.

Inherent to the story is the contentious issue of the State’s right to inflict capital punishment on a convicted murderer. This, and the question of: can punishment be legislated to fit a crime are explored in a thought provoking way which presents arguments for the crime victim and the perpetrator.

Through a series of flashbacks the reader learns about the boy’s early life. Food, nearly always in short supply, Drew steals to feed his brothers and Billy shoplifts clothes and anything else they need to get by. Their stepfather, Maury, drifts in and out their lives, his sometimes violent actions as he extracts money from Arden wreaks havoc on what little family life the boys experience. Always protective of their younger brother, Alex, Drew and Billy shelter him from the reality of their chaotic life.

Glimpses of the friendship and wild times the brothers share as they freewheel around the local neighborhood are funny and touching. While Drew and Alex make the transition from neglected abused children to responsible married men, Billy, accustomed to righting wrongs with his fists, doesn’t cut it. An ongoing disastrous love affair with a vulnerable flawed woman and a fight with Drew precipitate the tragic events which culminate in the death of a highway cop and Billy, at the scene and traumatized by the event, is arrested for murder.

As time moves inexorably towards Billy’s execution date, Drew’s attempts to unravel the mystery of what really happened on the desert highway the night a cop was killed and Billy charged with murder are suspenseful and involving.       

Only two American author’s books have moved me to tears; at age nine years, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s classic, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and as an adult, reading Larry Mc Murtry’s, The Evening Star. Now there’s a third – H. Lee Barnes, a good writer touched by greatness. Read his latest book, Car Tag; you’ll be glad you did.