We, as a people, carry a bizarre obsession with serial and
spree killers. My wife has a rather large section of our library dedicated to
the subject and she is, by no means, alone in her focus. They seem to be a part
of the American mythic collective, where we tend to view them as something
significantly more, or less, than human. In our minds, they are monstrous,
gigantic beings of grotesque intent and capability instead of broken human
beings acting in a horrific fashion. Therefore, it is no surprise that we get
so much fiction focused on them.
In Cain’s Blood,
Geoffrey Gerard gives us a world where
the proverbial mad scientist (as a part of the Grand Organization of Super-Mad
Scientists, under the guise of a humble evil corporation) has taken to cloning
some of America’s worse serial killers. Ostensibly, this is to isolate the gene
that makes us do evil things to each other (I believe they called it the Cain
gene, out of subtlety), but we all know that isn’t what it will end up being
used for, right? Now, a group of those kids are roaming the country and
painting it fifty shades of crimson. Enter former soldier and current merc
Shawn Castillo and the “pure” clone of Jeffrey Dahmer, Jeff Jacobson, to hunt
them down. Blood, paranoia and introspection ensue.
Comparisons to Crichton and Harris are inevitable. You have
tons of somewhat scientific mumbo-jumbo at the heart of a tale that focus on a
determined sleuth’s manhunt or a sadistic killer (or killers, in this case).
Hell, I’d throw in the political paranoia of Robert Ludlum in there, too. If
you like them, I’m sure you’ll enjoy yourself with this one. I don’t.
I see a lot of potential here. We’ve got a boy struggling to
define himself and figure out if he is what he was designed to be, or his own
person. Monster or Man. We’ve got a modern equivalent to the old broken down
P.I. of the noir days, with his own personal demons tied inextricably to the
larger events of the books. A bit of a buddy cop thing between two seemingly
disparate individuals who are forced to put aside their mutual distrust and
realize how alike they truly are (in the sense that they were both designed to
kill). Hell, there is a monumental opportunity to deal with the dichotomy of
value and horror we place on mass murder, as a society. Any one of those things
could get me doing a jig. All of them would leave me convulsing.
However, that potential just wasn’t met for me. The boy is
largely sidelined (though he has his own book, Project Cain, which may delve face first into his interior dilemma).
The nefarious demons are completely monochromatic, moustache twirling,
muwahahahaing baddies with no depth to make them interesting to me. To me, though
the worst part is how on- the-nose it is about the grand thematic tie in. At a
couple points, the narrative stops dead to have a character, usually Castillo
of Jeff, point out that soldiers aren’t much more than murderers for hire. I
don’t like feeling as if the writer is calling me stupid.
Don’t get me wrong, the writing itself is usually tight and
the pacing, when not stopped dead by exposition, is smooth as butter.
Certainly, fans of the aforementioned authors will enjoy themselves here. But,
I couldn’t get past what I so much wanted this novel to be. However, I admit
being incredibly curious about Project Cain, since the kid was the character I really wanted to know more about.
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