Preemptive Retaliation

Reading this book was a little like falling down a flight of stairs. I took it one step, two step, five steps, then all the rest at once. I don’t really know what it was that got me hooked in, whether it was the simple humorous prose or its unanswerable question… but I know when I decided to stay up half the night to finish it. A four lined paragraph that changed everything I thought about the main character and his story. It completely turned the book around for me, and I found myself doubting medical reports over the word of a self-confessed murderer.

If that sounds purposefully vague, it’s because it was purposefully vague. That’s the problem when I want to talk about books I like; I don’t know whether I should draw a line at review – and so save any readers the potential for spoilers – or to go into discussions and reveal plot points as I unravel them from my mind. I suppose this would be a problem if people were to read this, but right now I am cosily secluded in my little corner of the internet.

I was taken in by Roddy, the main character, as he honestly and succinctly retold the events that led up to him murdering three people. He didn’t mince his words, and even though he would gloss over some things it was never a cause for concern. I took what he said as a plain, matter-of-fact truth. It was only after I had read his account, satisfied at why he murdered those people, that the four lined paragraph of the coroners report stated that one of the bodies had been sexually mutilated. I actually skipped back in the book to see if I had missed that – just to double check in case my jaded sensibilities caused me glaze over graphic sexual violence – only to find nothing mentioned of the sort. It wasn’t there at all.

And my first thought was that the coroners report had been faked.

That’s what kept me awake and reading for the rest of the night. For those of you who know, I still had half the book to go. But, like I said; I fell down those stairs hard. It was that simple premise that really made me smile at the end of the day; it made me want to believe that this young boy, this brutal murderer, was telling the truth and it was almost mindless retribution that brought him to his cell, not the feral anger of sex. And then, as the book concludes with no definitive answers, more questions come to mind. Was he then really… Was his sister actually… Did that even… I spent half the night reading it, then another good hour tossing and turning it over in my mind as I did the same in bed.

Ahhh, it really got to me, and I really liked it. It felt so simple and self explanatory to begin with; a straight up mystery of why someone killed others… and maybe it is just that. It’s just a question of why this person did what they did, but it drew me in so far with its lies, or false-truths, that when it all changed it left a lasting impression on me. Definitely one to keep on the bookshelf.