A brutal killing of an old girlfriend disrupts the college social life of Herman Harris. The victim’s father offers a reward, and Herman begins a hunt for the killer. As the girls of college bedevil him, Herman discovers growing proof of the killer’s insanity when he confronts that madness in a struggle illuminating the deep truth that lurks in his own soul.
This is the second book of Herman Harris’s adventures as he gets drawn into mysterious circumstances connected in small measure to his search to understand women. Once again, he finds himself searching for the bad guy, or guys, nearly getting himself killed along the way.
I “met” Herman, aka Mo, through Converse’s later novels and couldn’t wait to go back to the earlier books to get to know Mo as a young man. Converse’s first two novels don’t disappoint in his story telling. I also appreciate that the author doesn’t try to connect up all the new story details with the previous stories, a fault I find too many authors of series fall into. Each novel stands on its own, building the image of Mo’s character progressively.
A 19 year old college student with raging hormones and a dark side trying to solve the murder of a friend forms the basis for this novel. He is motivated by the monetary reward as much as he is by a desire for justice. There is violence and a gruesome ending of perverse retribution in this well developed, radpidly moving novel. Do you agree that justice was served? Reviewed by the author of The Children's Story, A Novel Not for Children (about good and evil).