Sweet Undoings

In Port-au-Prince, violence never consumes. It finds its counterpart in a "high-pitched sweetness", a sweetness that overwhelms Francis, a French journalist, one evening at the Corossol Restaurant-Bar, when the broken, rich voice of lounge singer Brune rises from the microphone.

Brune's father, Judge Berthier, was assassinated, guilty of maintaining integrity in a city where everything is bo...