Amazing read…I couldn’t put this book down. The very hilarious husband of a friend of mine recommended it to me about a year ago and I just got around to picking it up via Amazon.com. Jules Hardy, first of all, is a female author, which I did not realize until well into the 406 pg novel. Most of the characters in the book are male and I assumed incorrectly that ‘Sheila was a man’ due to her succinct and to the point characterization of these men.
The book evokes a range of emotions in the reader, from horror and disbelief during more macabre scenes to curiosity and revulsion regarding sexual taboos. The way Hardy approaches both the sick and the gruesome is neutral and in a way without judgment, so that the reader himself is left with the scales and the decision to weigh or not weigh.
Morality is a funny thing. We all must have our own sense of right or wrong, but when it comes down to matching societal mores, what if our intuition goes against the guidelines set by the world around us? I have always intuitively been against the death penalty. To me, it is just wrong for any system to make a judgment on whether a person lives or dies. I have always felt that the higher powers that be make that decision for us, and courts should not intervene. That seems so intuitively right to me. And in terms of a person taking the life of another…I always abhorred the slight flitter of contentment I would feel when an evil character in a movie finally dies at the hand of the hero protagonist. Who are we to make decisions on the life or death of our fellow human beings?
Mister Candid challenged these views for me. As the back cover will reveal, the story is about a serial killer who rids society of its depraved offenders, namely rapists and child molesters. The title character, I hesitate to type “protagonist” but in a sense that is who he is, makes a career out of this societal “cleansing”, and I found myself rooting for his success in the end. After all, he is killing the vermin that have themselves killed and tortured before, so it is poetic justice, isn’t it? But who is to judge who should or should not be “cleansed” from society? Where do the lines blur before we evoke another Hitler extreme into our midst?
The story follows how Chum Kane, aka Mister Candid, became the serial killer that he is, and is paralleled by the soul-searching of Flanagan, a cop who wants to find Mister Candid and decide for himself which is the better way, to hand over the depraved to the justice (and often injustice) of the courts, or to enforce judgment upon them by pulling the trigger himself. I found myself closely relating to Flanagan’s moral struggle and when I set down the book reluctantly after the 406th page I found myself at a bit of a loss. Rooting for a serial killer. Hmm…
This novel is extremely well-written in a blunt, matter-of-fact style, and will keep you on the edge of your seat and your principles. If I were to point out any criticism, it would be that the ending seems a bit truncated, almost rushed. But perhaps that’s only because I just want to keep following Chum Kane until he finds redemption. Perhaps.
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