Book Review: The Butcher and the Butterfly

Reviewed by Warren Maxwell

A gritty story of smoky bars, violence, and salvation

“‘Does this look like the face of a winner?’”

Up and coming boxer Bobby Raymond, the Baltimore Kid, has a shot at the world championship belt. Or so he thought, until a straightforward hometown victory turns into a grotesque knock-down-drag-out of a fight. Bobby might pull out the win, but it’s a pyrrhic victory that leaves him ready to quit. His hands are broken, his face destroyed, his kidneys ache, and his will is gone. 

Rather than going through the motions of post-fight recovery, Bobby gives away his winnings, says goodbye to his ex-girlfriend, and sets off for New Orleans to right the wrongs in his life, starting by finding his brother Chuck, a person he betrayed long ago. 

Once in New Orleans, Bobby is swallowed up in the maze-like world of the French Quarter. In the process, colorful characters of all stripes enter his life—none more important than Holly, a beautiful ballerina who moonlights as a stripper at her abusive father’s club. 

Each relationship develops and pulls Bobby along a different path, whether to the racetracks, the dingy backrooms of bars, or opulent parties. The seedy atmosphere is laid on thick with cigarette smoke and booze practically spilling off the page. 

Yet in the midst of this down-and-out milieu, the core of the narrative is Bobby’s unflagging goodheartedness, his desire to turn the page on a life filled with pain and risk and, perhaps, save his newfound companion in the process.

“‘I’m not letting you walk away this time.’”

The novel’s pulpy sensibility wears its references on its sleeve. There’s a little bit of Bukowski, a dash of the classic detective noir, and an array of shameless boxing-story tropes that touch on everything from Rocky to Raging Bull—at one point a character screams, à la De Niro’s Jake La Motta, “Grrrrrrrr!…I’m not an animal! I’m a fuckin’ human being.” For fans of this genre, The Butcher and the Butterfly comes through.

Some of the the shades of gray that usually blur the line between good and evil in noir, pulp fiction, and boxing stories are less gray here. There’s a superficial clarity between right and wrong that doesn’t exactly allow for slivers of doubt to complicate the narrative tension. Heroes are heroes, villains are villains, and the gap between the two is vast.

The novel makes an interesting use of short chapters, but sometimes the chapter breaks come just as tension arises. That, or characters move from a small disagreement to an out and out fist fight within a cut. The abrupt shifts work sometimes but miss others.

The Butcher and the Butterfly is a compelling story of broken, down-and-out people finding one another and struggling to crawl out of the New Orleans underworld.

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