I haven’t read Childs’ latest .... bummer that he’s going down that route. Haven’t read much Crais, but what I’ve read, I like. :-)
My advice is to avoid The Affair altogether. All small-town southerners are ignorant, unbathed hicks — unless they’re black; then they’re noble heroes, horribly oppressed by the evil white folk.
He even goes so far as to attribute Edmund’s Burke’s “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil ...” quotation to Martin Luther King. Guess that will make him more popular with his lib cocktail party buds and gals.