Blackburn: A Novel (original 1993; edition 2007)

A short, interesting character study of a serial killer, starting from his disturbed childhood and going on through his killing years as we read how and why he picked his victims. Learning at a young age that people lied about most things, he developed his own code of ethics. Eventually, when someone failed to live up to his code he began to feel that they must be punished. His crimes weren’t elaborate or planned, usually just gut reaction to once again being disappointed in human nature.

We see that this disappointment started young with his parents. His father was a bully and a loser at life who took his temper out on his wife and son. His mother, bullied and beaten, was a coward who allowed her son to take the brunt of her husband’s anger. Eventually, Jimmy has had to suffer one cruelty too many and leaves home. Drifting from job to job and state to state, Jimmy deals out his form of punishment to many, always males. In fact, one of his rules is that he never kills women.

I was absorbed in this read about a boy who never really had a chance. You can’t help but feel sorry for him as he tries to do the “right” thing and live by a moral code, but can’t stand by when he sees others abusing their power and mistreating weaker people or animals. Blackburn is a quick read that most probably simplifies the psychology behind Jimmy’s actions, but nevertheless, I was glued to the pages as I followed Jimmy’s story to it’s conclusion. ( )

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. ( )

Even if it had not been set in a town 8 miles from where I was born, this novel is a unique masterpiece of psychological writing. A serial killer with no redeeming values whatsoever and yet, we can identify with him completely and thoroughly. This book is as disturbing about what it reveals of ourselves as it is about the hero. ( )