Plot: 4/9. The elegant narrating voice is good enough to compensate for the book’s lack of suspense, mystery and thrill, as well as abundance of unnecessary and tedious details.

Lavender, a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl, impulsively married a farmer named Johnny, moved into his house, and gave birth to the protagonist in 1973. She soon found that Johnny was a hidden monster by nature:

He didn’t agree to take his family to the hospital, even when they were seriously ill.

He thought them a financial burden, locked the cabinet up, didn’t provide his family with food, and expected Lavender to earn her own food while she was mothering.

He showed such indifference to his family that he refused to find his lost son. He physically abused his son and Lavender.

So after she gave birth to the second child, she phoned 911 to pick up her children from the farm to the foster system, and at the same time, ran away from Johnny.

In the orphanage, Saffy fell in love with the young protagonist. But just a she was about to confess her love, she found the protagonist was the one who had been mutilating little animals and throwing them on the floor to horrify others. She was so frightened that she escaped immediately. The protagonist bribed her with precious cookies to ask her not to tell, and later put the corpse of a fox onto her bed for intimidation .

Saffy was so scared that she could hardly eat. The social workers had to transport her to another house. Before she left, the protagonist apologised and she pardoned him.

Hazel was the twin sister of Jenny who had recently found a new boyfriend, aka the protagonist, and invited him to spend Christmas with family. The protagonist told them that he lost his family at a young age and gave Jenny a ring as the Christmas present. Hazel was jealous of Jenny and desired her boyfriend.

One night she caught the protagonist digging a hole surreptitiously in the yard. She then checked the guest room to assure herself that it was just a dream.

As Saffy was an teenager struggling with drug addiction, she reported information about Lida—one of the three missing girls in 1990 and also one of her childhood best friends—to the policewoman named Moretti, who subsequently became a crucial character helping her get her a job as a homicide detective. Nine years later, they found their cadavers and reopened the case.

Saffy got the protagonist’s name from one of the protagonist’s ex-girlfriends claiming on the same night she had laughed at the protagonist’s erectile dysfunction, one of the victims had gone disappearing. She reported the lead to Moretti, who dismissed it and ordered her to investigate the other suspect.

Saffy defied the order and contacted the protagonist’s fianceé, Jenny, who refused to tell more about the protagonist, once she knew the protagonist was related to a homicide. But Lida’s ring on the Jenny’s finger was substantial enough to alert Moretti. Moretti again neglected this clue, reproached her, and even suspended her, for she disobeyed the order and the “real” suspect Moretti thought would be arraigned tomorrow.

Undeterred, Saffy then tracked the protagonist in her spare time. Finally the evidence Moretti had used to charge the suspect homicide proved to be weak under the scrutiny of the jury.

Decades later, Lavender hired a private detective and reached out the adopted mother of her younger son who took her to see Ellis’s photo. The adopted mother told her that she had only adopted the younger, because she thought the older one would only admitted Lavender as his real mother. So she selfishly asked Lavender never to disturb Ellis’ current life. Lavender obeyed.

Hazel helped Jenny to divorce the protagonist, who didn’t finish the university and behaved like a psychopath. Jenny confided to Hazel that Saffy had been stalking her husband. Blue, the daughter of Ellis and the niece of the protagonist, contacted the now-divorced protagonist, after Ellis died of cancer. Saffy, who observed this nervously, one day broke the protocol and told everything—including her unsupported suspicions—to Blue and her mother just to warn them off the protagonist.

The unwelcome protagonist discovered his ex-wife was flirting with another man and therefore he couldn’t help break into the door and kill Jenny. Hazel then handed the ring to Saffy and witnessed the protagonist’s burial of trinkets. Saffy brought them to force the protagonist’s into confessing.

Blue contacted Lavender and Hazel before attending the protagonist’s execution at his invitation.

Character: 6/9. Multifaceted and realistic

World and Others: 5/9.

Core: 6/9. The book spans from around 12 hours before the execution of the protagonist to the final execution, interweaving perspectives from his mother, his sister-in-law and the detective on his trail.

I didn’t think it rendered some thought-provoking topics about crime, punishment, life or death, yet it is a bit educational to suggest the fact that serial killers are nothing but pitiable losers, which could indeed disenchant adorers of serial killers.

For example, the protagonist even couldn’t manage to commit a perfect crime or just pretend to be a normal, decent person—he even couldn’t explain why he had done these crime with enough reason and clarity. He suffered perpetually from the darkness of his lurid childhood memory, such as the horrible DNA inherited from his father, his father’s attack on his brain, the crying baby, his obsession of trinkets rooted in a lie told by his mother, and his persistent longing for love that always ended in failure.