Violent Mind Candy

Null & Boyd Noir #2

by Gary S. Kadet

The heroes are Null, a man with neither feelings nor humanity, a near automaton of vengeance, and Boyd, a woman who has lost everything in her life that meant anything to her, ruled by guilt and a sense of duty at war with her compassion.

Criminal psychopath Dr. Benway, who saved Null’s sanity with an illegal, experimental therapy, has invented a new designer street drug delivered by a stick of gum. His plan is to distribute the gum, known as “the Chaw”, to Boston and Cambridge clubs for free to create demand. But when the Ecstasy-like sensual pleasure wears off, the after-effect is a murderous, violent rage.

Micmac Indian high-rise construction “edgewalker” and mob enforcer Filmore Lakeworry, known as “Lumpy” for his short, thick stature, forces a partnership with Benway at gunpoint. Null and Boyd set out to stop them, but Null changes his mind as the Chaw restores to him some of his lost humanity and Boyd can’t charge Benway because his specially concocted drug isn’t illegal.

Null falls into a short-lived, drug-driven romance with Boyd, ending with him tearing up the streets with extreme violence that ultimately installs him as the “Meth King” of Boston.

308 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 26, 2022

About the author

Gary S. Kadet was a journalist for 15 years working the crime, arts and general assignments beats for such newspapers as the Boston Herald, Globe and the Quincy Patriot Ledger. He was the Crime Editor for the nationally read Boston Book Review and wrote for Playboy Magazine, which published his fiction. He also ran the world's tenth-largest adult website and was a trailblazer in the early years of the Internet. He's the author of the literary thriller/romance novel "D/s - an Anti-Love Story" with Tor/Forge/Macmillan which was a main selection of the Doubleday book-of-the-month-club. The work broke new ground in detailing the seamy side of real-world (non-fantasy) BDSM, much to the chagrin of its self-appointed "community," who felt threatened by this work of fiction (in the same way bogus preachers felt about Sinclair Lewis' "Elmer Gantry"). Not shying away from controversy, his newest work is the literary novel "The Ogre Life," which on the surface is about the world of bodybuilding and all its attendant sexual fetishism, sleaze and drug use, but which actually questions the meaning of reality itself.

Reviews

[Doug B]

Violent Mind Candy is the second part in a three-part crime series. I read the first and was tantalized enough to pick up the second, and now that this one is done I'm ready for a third run. All kinds of craziness starting with one of our stars Null, who as the name suggests has zero feelings. He wreaks vengeance with nary a thought, and the results were always the same: success.
Kull’s counterpoint is Boyd, a police Lieutenant who lost everything except her femininity. Chipping in is Dr. Benway (William S. Burroughs anyone?), a psychopath you would swear eats his lunch naked.