Arnold Beckman is supposed to be a sophisticated man of business, but like Hackberry prefers maiming or killing people who get in his way. Though a former Ranger, he rarely resorts to the law, preferring instead to beat anyone to a pulp who crosses him or his loved ones. Despite being the “hero,” Hackberry seems to thrive on violence and confrontation. House Of The Rising Sun is not without its flaws. “Could he be as brave and defiant as they?”
Their death was a foregone conclusion, but rather than surrender, they executed their prisoners and used catapults to fling the decapitated heads over the walls into the Saracen line and went down to the last man, their swords ringing. For just a moment, as though he were looking through a third eye in his forehead, he saw a medieval fortress on the shores of Malta and Crusader Knights in chainmail and white tunics with red Templar crosses, surrounded by their Saracen enemies. “Acceptance of his fate did not mean he should be passive about it. Believing that the cup will bring him immense power, Beckman goes to any lengths - bribery, intimidation, kidnapping, and murder - to recover the chalice.ĭaniel Pink’s “The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward” (Riverhead…
When Hackberry destroys some weapons belonging to Beckman, he also takes a chalice that Beckman believes is the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper. Thrown into this complicated arrangement is the Holy Grail. Also opposing Beckman, at one time or another, are a former voodoo priest from Haiti and three women: Maggie Bassett, a former prostitute who marries Hack (she doesn’t have the stereotypical heart of gold of that profession, but a heart for gold) Beatrice DeMolay, a brothel madam who provides the link to the House of the Rising Sun and Ruby Dansen, Hack’s lover, mother of Ishmael, and a leader in the labor unions of that time. (I lost count of the bodies about a third of the way through the book).Īrnold Beckman, an Austrian-born arms dealer who is evil incarnate, wants to supply the world with weapons following the Great War, and becomes Hack’s opponent when their paths cross in Mexico. Several hundred characters, most of them minor, most of them “bad guys,” populate the canvas of House Of The Rising Sun, and many of them wind up dead or badly beaten by the novel’s end. Their epic attempts to reunite run from the battlefields of World War I to the bloodthirsty skirmishes of factions during the Mexican Revolution, from the brothels and gambling joints of Texas cow towns to the fancy hotels and mansions of San Antonio.
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