“Billy Hull was the owner of a local hardware and a local church leader. He wanted to cleanse his town of the evil of illegal drugs. He was partially paralyzed Vietnam veteran bound to a wheelchair, and Michael suspected that this was also a chance to feel relevant beyond his geographical and physical limitations. “You must be Lee Roy Brown, my new assistant,” he said. “That’s me. Bad, bad Lee Roy Brown,” Michael replied. They shared a good laugh and he worked in his store a few hours a day, pretending to be Hull’s sister’s boy from Memphis. They spent many nights sitting on his front porch under the starry sky and moon that highlighted the Spanish moss …show more content…
hanging from the trees. “Do you know what stars are?” Billy asked one night after a long silence. “They are just cracks in the curtain separating us from God. That’s the light of the celestial city, son”(Temple, 2018, p. 49).
The reader can envision this very scene unfolding while they are looking at the stars in Tylertown, Mississippi (2018, pg.
48). Billy Hull embodies just how complex the character can be inside of A Ghostly Shade of Pale. Temple reveals some of Hull’s hopes and dreams, and his struggle with his own personal demons (2018, pg. 49).
A Ghostly Shade of Pale has many strengths behind itself. Reliability is a key point in this piece for any reader who has familiarity with the south. Suspenseful is used throughout Temple’s work; in one example, he describes the “da tow, da tow” of gunfire sounds as the reader is left to worry about some agents (2018, pg. 335). And finally, descriptiveness perfumes the entire work from start to finish; “He wetted his lines as he sat in the lazy sun…” (Temple, 2018, pg. 1&383).
The major complaint of the work, however, would be the confusion it can provide for readers. In some instances, the piece may use flashbacks, which are always risky in every literary work; an example being in chapter twenty-four as Michael recounts on a previous drug bust he had undergone, quite suddenly (Temple, 2018, pg. 303). Overall there was not a lot of changes to make with this
piece.
If a reader has any interest in law enforcement or, mystery/crime work, then A Ghostly Shade of Pale is an excellent piece for them to read. The best suggestion for when reading this piece is to picture the scenes in your mind as a movie or like a television show, and that will help the flow of the novel progress better. Overall though, Mr. Temple did an excellent job with this piece and has proven to be an excellent writer. (297)