September 8, 2009 - "Shake the Devil Off" opens with the suicide of Zackery Bowen, an Iraq war veteran who ended his life in 2006 by leaping from a roof in the French Quarter. In Bowen's pocket, the New Orleans police found his dog tags, keys and a note that read: "I had to take my own life to pay for the one I took. If you send a patrol to 826 N. Rampart you will find the dismembered corpse of my girlfriend Addie in the oven, on the stove and in the fridge along with full documentation on the both of us and a full signed confession from myself."

The police went to the couple's apartment, where they discovered that Bowen had murdered Addie Hall more than a week earlier, then baked her legs in a tinfoil pan, packed her torso in the refrigerator and boiled her head, hands and feet in pots. Yet as soon as the author, Ethan Brown, finishes recounting these horrific details, his first question is: "Why was Zackery Bowen, a former Army sergeant, a veteran of two wars (Kosovo and Iraq), and a beloved bartender and ­deliveryman in the French Quarter, in such unimaginably deep emotional pain?"

The question jarred me, because my initial sympathy, on reading the grisly account, was with Addie Hall. I wondered about Brown's apparent bias, and evidently I wasn't alone. At one point he admits, "As I had interviewed Zack's friends and former military buddies, my wife had occasionally angrily accused me of being too sympathetic to Zack." He also allows that he identifies with Bowen, down to the similarities between their last names. Brown's partiality does not aid his analysis, but more on that later.

The book's most valuable insight is to link the war in Iraq with Hurricane Katrina, in that returning veterans and Katrina survivors exhibit similar symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Brown, the author of "Queens Reigns Supreme" and "Snitch," provides ample material to support this connection, especially with respect to Katrina. To research the book, he moved with his wife to New Orleans, where he became friends with Bowen and Hall's circle and experienced firsthand the aftermath of the hurricane.

The author finds in Bowen a singular example of such double-barreled post-traumatic stress, and produces interviews to show that Bowen was both fun-loving and responsible before going to Iraq, where he became depressed. The depression grew worse after he got home, and his marriage fell apart. Bowen drank and took drugs, then fell in love with Hall, a volatile poet and bartender who also abused alcohol and drugs. The couple lived through Katrina, refusing to evacuate, and afterward their relationship became turbulent. Brown reports that Bowen, who had begun frequenting gay bars, eventually entered into a secret homosexual relationship. When Hall found out, she broke up with him, and they were fighting over their apartment on the night Bowen killed her.

Brown concludes that the combined post-traumatic stress from Iraq and Katrina is the reason Bowen killed Hall and himself, and the jacket echoes this cry, claiming that the book is a tribute "to two victims of these disasters, Zackery Bowen and Addie Hall." But to focus so narrowly on factors extrinsic to Bowen as an individual seems to absolve him of responsibility for the crime. With regard to Hall, the statement is simply incorrect: she may have been a victim of Iraq and Katrina, but she was primarily a victim of Bowen.

A more nuanced analysis would consider Bowen's drug and alcohol abuse, his cover-up of and confusion about his sexuality, his reaction to his parents' divorce and his unhappy adolescence, during which he exhibited low self-esteem and dropped out of his California high school. Although Brown has reported all the facts that would support a fuller explanation, his sympathy for his subject has led him to a shakier conclusion. There is a difference between explaining and explaining away.

Interestingly, Bowen himself didn't blame either Iraq or Katrina for the murder. In his last note, he alone assumed the responsibility, referring to the life "I took."

Ultimately, the value of this provocative, if imperfect, book lies in its careful examination of a tragic crime; the author has also made a significant contribution to the literature about the Iraq war. "Shake the Devil Off" can best be read as a follow-up to Dexter Filkins's perfect book, "The Forever War." If Filkins taught us about the war over there, Brown has brought the war home, and for that he deserves much credit.

Lisa Scottoline's latest novel is "Look Again."

The New York Times