When you conjure up people who do bad things, you ponder just where the motivation to do those things comes from. Bad upbringing? Childhood abuse and neglect? Genetic malfunction? Pure malice?
And then I’m reading the paper this morning and there’s a story about a 20-year-old guy who allegedly stabbed three people to death, including a 10-year-old boy. And the story says the guy stayed with local clerics in this part of Maine, that he could be nice but sometimes he was “like a person possessed.”
By the devil, of course. An alien being that would take over your body. The stuff of movies. Or medieval times. Or any situation where there is a belief in evil as a condition unto itself.
I’ve always stayed away from books about deranged serial killers. Boring. So the explanation is that the guy (almost always) is whacked out? What’s interesting about that? Unless you fully explore the real reasons people become serial killers. Still I see those two words and I put the book aside.
But evil. As something engendered, planted, encouraged by the devil. Now that’s more interesting. Not just because it might happen, but because some people fervently believe in it. Irrational but explicable badness. In DAMAGED GOODS, there is a Satanist villain. I always added the adjective “deranged Satanist” in discussing the book. But some would see that as redundant. Read the story linked to above. Was Thayne Ormsby possessed by “a demon right out of Hell?” Or is he just a screwed up guy with anger management issues.
Interesting.
I’ll be at Boothbay Harbor, Maine, Saturday for the Maine Summer Book Fair. I’m talking at 1 p.m. Chatting until three-ish. Forty authors assembled in a great Maine coast town. I hope I see some of you there. We can continue the discussion.
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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