Discussing My Novel in Progress: Killer Instincts

At the top of my blog, there's a page that links to some potential "back copy" for my novel-in-progress, Killer Instincts. The manuscript has been finished for a while now, and I'm about halfway through the first big edit after my Alpha Reader had a crack at the text.

For the majority of you who've never heard or seen me talk about it...

Killer Instincts is the story of William Lynch, an upper-middle class college junior, whose parents and teenage sister are killed in a mob hit while he's in Paris during spring break in March of 2001. William's father is a hotshot DA in Boston, attempting to prosecute Pauly Paggiano, the son of a minor-league crime boss, for the rape and murder of a young college girl. In order to deliver a savage message to the eyewitnesses in the case - the only real evidence the prosecution has - the Paggianos kill William's family and burn their Providence home to the ground.

William is informed of the tragedy by his estranged uncle Jamie Lynch, a Vietnam veteran and former SOG Green Beret. Jamie leads a reclusive existence in Maine, where he owns a log cabin on the shore of Moosehead Lake and works in a sporting goods shop. William has only met his uncle a handful of times over the years; both of William's parents were against Jamie having much contact with their son, worried that Jamie - whose views on war and violence can be disturbing - would somehow "corrupt" their son into a warmonger.  Jamie was a soldier who thrived in combat, and after the war he spent a number of years participating in activities that can only be described as morally ambiguous...

Now, Jamie is the only family William has left. Meeting for the first time in years, Jamie reveals to William the reasons behind his family's slaughter; the court case against Pauly Paggiano, how the eyewitnesses have all withdrawn their testimonies or otherwise backed out of the case, and how the case against Pauly has been thrown out. Faced with the enormity of what has happened to him, William realizes that at 21, any hope he has for a normal life has been erased by this terrible act. Feeling he doesn't have anything to lose, since his future has been so horribly ruined, William decides he's going to find a way to avenge his family and destroy the Paggianos.  He begs Jamie to join with him in his crusade, but Jamie refuses, declaring that he can't go back to that way of life after decades of maintaining a civilized existence.  Seeing his nephew is committed to this idea with or without his help, Jamie begrudgingly admits that, although he's not going to help William, he knows someone who can.

Jamie introduces his nephew to Richard, a mysterious, eccentric Texan who made his living for decades as a professional mercenary. Although he's now retired from taking active assignments, Richard has a network of contacts and resources he'd be willing to provide to William, for a price. After some consideration, William decides that he wouldn't feel right contracting the Paggiano's destruction; he wants to keep the revenge personal. So, for a hundred thousand dollars (plus expenses), Richard agrees to mentor William through an intense, month-long training and indoctrination regimen out in the Texas desert.

What takes place next is the mental and physical transformation of a peaceful, white-collar college student into a bloody-minded vigilante killer. And then the fun really begins...

Killer Instincts is an exploration of violence and morality, wrapped in a tale of personal vendetta. Writing the story, I took a great deal of inspiration from Brian Garfield's novel Death Wish, made so famous by the film adaptation starring Charles Bronson. I think Death Wish gets something of a bad rap, in part because of how ridiculous and over-the-top the movie sequels become (let's face it, by the end, Kersey is killing guys with rocket launchers...). But the original novel, and to much the same extent the first movie, really do a great job of getting into the head of a peaceful, liberal-minded, affluent urban male who suddenly finds himself thrust into a world of tragic violence, and how he learns to use that violence to regain control of his life. The novel, even more than the movie, does an excellent job of laying out the arguments for and against vigilantism, and whether such actions are, or ever could be, the work of a completely rational mind. The last third of Garfield's novel really becomes a debate as to weather or not Paul Benjamin (renamed to Paul Kersey in the films) has become psychotic.

I also took a lot from books written on the subject of violence and society. Historian John Keegan has some very good comments in his book A History of Warfare, on how culture affects attitudes on violence. Some of this makes its way into Killer Instincts, where William indirectly references the text as one he read for a Western Civilization class in college.  In particular, a section of the book focusing on "cowboy cultures" which developed tactics for herding cattle or other food animals, as well as familiarity with killing and butchering large animals - the squealing and the flailing, the gushing blood, the spilled guts, the stink of offal and excrement. Keegan believes that cultures (such as the Mongols) who were familiar with these practices made for superior killers against societies where most people were farmers and raised animals for milk or other byproducts. Herding cultures are, in a way, predatory cultures, where the shepherds can quickly slip into the role of wolf attacking the "flock" that is their enemy.

Another excellent text on this subject is Colonel Dave Grossman's On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. Anyone who wants to read about the subject should pick up this text, because it delivers a deep examination of how soldiers and warriors are indoctrinated into "killing culture", especially in this modern era, where we are so separated from death and casual violence.  There has been no small amount of controversy around Grossman's book; some accuse him of fudging findings or drawing conclusions that cited studies might not agree with, but I think in the end there's plenty to take away from this work. I spent a lot of time thinking about how Grossman breaks down the "distances of killing" and how they affect the killer, and I tried incorporating some of that into the story I was writing.

There were many other influences at play while I wrote this novel; lots of books and movies about mercenaries and vendettas and revenge stories. The original idea behind the novel was the character of William Lynch himself; originally I wanted to write a pure action thriller about a mercenary who'd never been in the military, and from there i began thinking about how a "civilian" would get into the mercenary business. Eventually I came up with the idea that the character had earned his spurs, so to speak, while avenging a family vendetta. Of course, how does a "normal" young man pull off such a challenge and live to tell about it? The answer to that question is what led me down the road to writing this novel.

As I said in the beginning, right now I'm a couple of weeks away from being done with the first major editorial pass. I'll be looking for readers to provide feedback and encourage another round of editing. With a little luck, I might be able to pub the novel through KDP in mid-June. Fingers crossed...