“Oh, the horror.” —Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
It’s been a bad few days in my neck of the Maine woods. A couple of weeks ago a young man named Gordon shot and killed his wife in front of their two children, then shot himself at the end of a police chase. Then, yesterday, a man named Lake killed his estranged wife and their two young children. Then he killed himself. Police came before he could torch the house.
In both cases, marriages that had begun with joy not so many years ago, were in tatters. Children lived amidst anger and, at least in the second case, threats of violence. And then, in a last convulsion of spite and twisted logic, the families were destroyed from within. Survivors are shattered and will carry this horror with them forever. There’s no way to rationalize it, make it make sense, make it better. It is done. It cannot be fixed. Oh, the horror.
I read these stories with a sort of dread. I looked at the photos of the families in happier days. The picture of the Lake family in the Bangor Daily News shows the family on vacation. They’re smiling, entrance stickers to a museum or something stuck to their shirts. From that happy day to this.
I’ve written about domestic violence before, in my newspaper days, of course, and in a novel called LIFELINE. In that book Jack McMorrow befriends a woman who has come to court to seek protection from her abusive boyfriend. Her name is Donna Marchant. McMorrow tries to help her. It doesn’t work out very well.
Of all my books, LIFELINE has the most realistic conclusion. In the end, there is no knight in shining armor. McMorrow tries to salvage a bad situation. A child is spared. A bad guy is hauled off in handcuffs. The plot twists and turns and, in the end, snaps your head back. This is one where even I didn’t see it coming.
But there is no real justice in these sorts of cases, not in real life. In hindsight, these tragedies seem both avoidable (oh, if only we’d known) and inevitable. Protection orders issued by courts are just pieces of paper. They don’t stop bullets. They don’t stop someone bent on self-destruction.They have little effect on someone who wants to die and take others with him.
This is why I don’t write true crime books. In the fictional world of my novels, there is justice. There are bad guys but they usually get what’s coming to them. In the end, there is order, or at least a semblance of it. In real life? Not so much.
So after I read about true crimes like these, I retreat to the refuge of my made-up stories and my made-up friends. There are good guys and bad guys but good guys usually win. McMorrow is funny. Clair is wise. Roxanne is courageous. Brandon Blake is sincere and earnest. Mia is writing it all down.
If only s real life were like this. As Hemingway wrote, “Isn’t it pretty to think so.”
In PORT CITY SHAKEDOWN, the first Brandon Blake novel, Brandon gets a full dose of bad guys. A brawl in a funeral home introduces him to Joel Fuller, a sociopathic hustler. Fuller is fresh out of jail and determined to take Brandon out—after Fuller and his sidekick Kelvin shake him down.
Rocky isn’t a tough guy. He’s a skinny little kid with crooked glasses, and he shouldn’t be homeless in Portland, Maine. When McMorrow and Roxanne pluck him from under the stomping feet of a gang of street kids, Rocky latches onto McMorrow–and drags him into a world of murder, both old and new. Why is McMorrow protecting Rocky? The cops want to know. Why is Rocky on the run? McMorrow wants to know. Why does death follow in Rocky’s wake? Jack and Roxanne need to find out before they’re added to the list. 
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Had not checked out your blog for a while. The recent Maine news is stunning, and I won’t go on, too much, about the abomination. What the F?
So, why do we write? To make things right, in our own minds. Does the virtual world, TV, etc. disconnect us from other human experience (and animals too, let’s not forget…) numb us to horror? I think about paltry excuses and blame playing. I’m pissed off, with no where to direct the anger and frustration.
Goodness begets goodness. Not a formal religion, but a decent philosophy. If thoughts are ‘things’, direct our thoughts in the vein of decency and respect. Peace, man. Thanks for acknowledging the loss. Keep on, keeping on, and being kind, telling stories with good outcomes and heroic actions.