Mister Candid

This is the best thriller I have read in ages. A true page turner that kept me up till the early hours finishing it because I just couldn't put it down. Jules Hardy tells a compelling story and writes in a hard hitting yet beautiful style.
A serial killer is murdering America's scum criminals, but is he a hero or a villian, good or evil? What is the driving force behind his actions? What happened 17 years ago to this boy genius, that set him off on his course of actions? Would you do the same thing if you could get away with it? Is it okay to sympathise with him? This book creates so many moral dilemmas, and countless questions about what is right and wrong, that it will be sure to keep you thinking about the issues it stirs until long show more after you've finished reading it. show less

Librarything guessed I wouldn't like this and it was almost right. It is one of those reads that left me with a vaguely bad taste in my mouth at the end of it but still managed to keep me reading (which is why it gets 3* rather than lower). There were times that I could see what the writer was doing through the text and there were times it jarred badly on my liking of it. Still it was readable and Charlie "Chum" Kane was an interesting character. The ending did feel quite rushed.

There's a man out there killing pedophiles. Feared by those he hunts and both admired and chased by the legal authorities this is a story of who he is and how he comes to be. Lots of asides and looking into the past it's a story that I felt had issues with show more determining where it wanted to be. It was neither thriller or literary novel but was trying to be both.

Not bad but it felt like the author could do better. I'm not sure I'm willing to explore to see. show less

A different kind of book of what I was expecting...it is not the thriller I was thinking of when I got it via Bookcrossing, ages ago. In fact, the book has been on my TBR shelf for 11 years, and in my hands several times, but only recently I chose it among all the books, as I was hoping in a light thriller story to entertain me on a train ride to Birmingham and back.
I was hooked by the story. It's not a thriller as I thought, nor a serial killer story as we know them. It's really a tragic story of a family, of the rich and not so, of the search for justice and thirst of revenge, and since it is not a thriller it is not a fault that you can see where this is going.
Unfortunately, I found the end a bit too rushed, but all in all a good show more read. I have another book by this author, and I will probably give it a go before too long - hoping it will be just as easy to read and entertaining. show less

This is one of the most disturbing books I have ever read. It has incest, pedophilia, social violence, you name it.

Why I read this? Well, in my college days, I was on a long train journey and this was the only book available at the smallest bookstore in the world at a train station (I didn't catch the name)which was not written by a Crichton, a Grisham or an Archer.

Not bad but a very grim tale. The end will break your heart. It still pains me from time to time whenever I think about that last page. Some stories just stays with you.

An absorbing psychological mystery.