T.F. Torrey's Review of Blackburn by Bradley Denton

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 a unique structure that I was immediately jealous of, 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. Was it his father? The bully? Who?

In the book, young Jimmy Blackburn is tormented as a youngster 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 Blackburn in that direction. Instead, the events of Jimmy Blackburn's childhood lead him to an inexorable decision. He is not a victim, he is 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 and compelling. Many of the murder scenes are surprisingly funny. The chapter with the encyclopedia salesman is hilarious, and the chapter with the car repair scam artists is wickedly 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 that likes dogs as much as Blackburn does. Denton even took some fun shots at himself, putting an author of a book very much like this one into his own book. 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, and the cops are jerks. There are no good cops in this book. Anyway, he's in shackles and handcuffs, and the jerky DPS troopers are escorting him back to the jail after his preliminary hearing, and Blackburn tells them he has killed men, but never a woman.

"How many men?" the first trooper asked.

"Just so we know how scared we should be," the second said.

"Eighteen," Blackburn said. "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, then there's just something wrong with you.

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