read in public at your own risk.....

books:


	• Blackburn: A Novel Bradley Denton Picador, 2007 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 16 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Go Jimmy, kill, kill!

What to make of this book? I went into it knowing what the author was trying to do and thinking, "He'll never pull it off." Well, he does. It works because of the time spent building the character of Jimmy Blackburn, a kid growing up abused out in the sticks and trying to make sense of a cruel world. He is so decent he cannot abide the deliberate infliction of pain on helpless victims, be they humans or dogs. So he kills them -- a mean cop, crooked mechanics, a wifebeater, etc.

A masterpiece of black humor, it's also surprisingly touching. Imagine Holden Caulfield as the protagonist of a serial killer novel and you have some idea. This is the ideal novel for the fans of serial killer books, American humor aficinados and dog lovers on your gift list.

BTW, if you are interested in the polar opposite of "Blackburn," check out Shane Stevens "By Reason of Insanity."

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would blackburn kill blackburn?

if he didn't know he had a moral code?
if thoughts could kill, so many of us would be serial murderers.
we'd take out a lot of people having a bad day too

but blackburns victims were all deaths we could root for, especially given our knowledge of Blackburn's inner monologue
poor blackburn, his mission ended too soon.

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Cheer For The Killer

Generally, when a serious book set in modern America features a person who murders twenty people, that person is not the star, you don't find yourself cheering him on, and you aren't sad when the killing spree comes to an end. In Blackburn, Bradley Denton makes all of that happen.

Blackburn follows the life of Jimmy Blackburn, told through a series of nineteen stories spanning his life. The book has an intriguing structure, alternating stories called things like "Victim Number Two" (which is the tantalizing first one) with numbered and named chapters (the second chapter is actually called "One: Blackburn and the Blind Man"). The chapters alternate between "Victim" and "numbered and named" chapters for the rest of the book. I found this structure terribly interesting, especially beginning with "Victim Number Two". For a long time we are left wondering who victim number one was. His father? The bully? Who?

In the book, young Jimmy Blackburn is tormented by his father and various other thugs and shysters. While this formula could be used to make Blackburn into a victim, carrying out his violent deeds because of lingering pain of his childhood, Denton doesn't take it that direction. Instead, the events of Jimmy Blackburn's childhood lead him to an inexorable decision. He will not be a victim, he will be a perpetrator, a righter of wrong, a sticker-up for the downtrodden, an anti-hero. And we are along for the ride, holding on and hoping for the best and knowing it can't end well.

From beginning to end, the book is excellent, compelling, and surprisingly funny. The chapter with the encyclopedia salesman is hilarious, and the chapter with the car repair scam artists is wicked fun. There are lots of dogs along the way. You could make a case that without the dogs there wouldn't have been a story at all. It's hard not to like a guy who likes dogs as much as Blackburn does. Denton even takes some fun shots at himself, inserting an author of a book very much like this one into the narrative. It is, to say the least, interesting when Blackburn confronts him. The most compelling part of the story, though, is when Blackburn runs into another serial killer, only the evil kind. Perhaps it's meaningful that this encounter is the beginning of the end for Blackburn.

Toward the end of the book there is, to me, the most satisfying exchange, so cool that I have to share it here at the risk of spoiling something for someone. It should come as no surprise that Blackburn finds himself in the custody of the police. Here, Blackburn has decided to be forthright with them, but his honesty is not appreciated. There are no good cops in this book. The jerky DPS troopers are escorting him in shackles and handcuffs back to the jail after his preliminary hearing when Blackburn tells them he has killed men, but never a woman. "How many men?" the first trooper asks. "Just so we know how scared we should be," the second says. "Eighteen," Blackburn says. "So far." It helps the excitement of the moment that the exchange takes place in the chapter called "Victim Number Nineteen". Wicked fun.

Blackburn is a great book, funny and exciting and sad. If it doesn't make you cheer for the killer and wail at the unjust world when he doesn't get to kill more people, there's something wrong with you.

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read in public at your own risk.....

...people will wonder what the hell is wrong with you as you literally blurt out roaring, uncontrollable laughter. VERY few other books have ever made me do this, NONE on such a *continuous* basis.
Lest you forget, this is about a serial killer:
"what's so funny?"
(incoherently *try* to quit laughing, regain your composure, and explain why that murder WAS SO FUNNY)...
I read this book a year ago, and it still impacts me as one of the best ever. I read a fair amount, yet most books are so unmemorable to me.
if you want a book that questions the whole polemic issue of "good and evil" i recommend this book. if you want to laugh, ditto.
i'm here searching for it to buy my own copy, because it was that eff-in good (one in a thousand books -- that's how many books i want to re-read, let alone what fraction of that i would buy AFTER I have read it already, if i hadn't bought it in the first place).
I HEART THIS BOOK

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

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What a ride!

I read this book in less than eight hours, impossible to put down and hard to forget!

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

Blackburn is a serial killer. But, like the rest of us, he confronts the same hypocrisies and frustrations of the world and, unable to help himself, or at the mercy of circumstance, he crosses a dangerous threshold--and he kills. In this novel, we meet many of his twenty-one victims: law enforcers, writers, adulterers, auto mechanics, and other liars. And each crime reveals another side of his psyche . . . and his disturbing rationale for murder.

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