Be careful where you go and very careful who you cross, for sometimes the sun shines on even the darkest souls.
Meet the Silver Dagger ... and hell on earth.
Robert Carrana doesn't have much pity and he certainly has no compassion. What he does have is a passion for vengeance, a brutal heart and a list of those he wants to see dead.
Carved out of a hellish childhood and polished with unbelievable arrogance, he could well be the worst man alive.
Queensland's Gold Coast is home to many and holiday paradise to millions - the last place one would imagine to be the hunting ground of a brutal but brilliant serial killer. For Brisbane detective Joseph Crowley, the ask is going to be great, possibly far greater than he ever imagined. Will he find out who's next on the list before paradise is lost for another innocent, or perhaps not so innocent victim, or will hell continue on its way.
The Silver Dagger, Jame McLean
Sometimes I wonder if a book gets filed under "will get around to that" because of some sort of subconscious reaction to the blurb. I'm going with that. Makes me feel somewhat less daft than if I confessed that I put THE SILVER DAGGER down on a stack of unread books and then promptly forgot about it. It's not age, just poor stack management... really.
Anyway, the rediscovery of this book did give me a little pause for thought.
"Robert Carrana doesn't have much pity and he certainly has no compassion. What he does have is a passion for vengeance, a brutal heart and a list of those he wants to see dead."
So we're not talking lightness of touch, violence slightly off page. The reader will be spending a fair amount of time in yet another nutter's head. Which is increasingly a rather dismal place to be, not necessarily because of the trail of destruction and violence, or because of the relentless self-justification or glorification. But, because, well let's be frank, it's all been done before. To make me resist an instant, overwhelming desire to feed the book to the pet pigs, there's got to be something pretty special about this viewpoint these days.
THE SILVER DAGGER not just defeated the overwhelming desire, it beat it to death. For reasons which are actually quite tricky to explain. There's absolutely nothing pleasant or redeeming about Robert Carrana. There's no holds barred in the brutal and vicious killing path he treads through Queensland. And yet, he's fascinating. Perhaps it's the sense of pace built into the story, perhaps it is that there are no apologies, no explanations, no overt justifications over what or why. Perhaps it is the chance to spend time with somebody who truly seems completely without pity, but from a safe distance. Because he is a man on a mission, because he doesn't much care who gets in his road, there's something extremely discomforting about the way that he kills with such dispassionate disinterest that is truly frightening. There is however, the balancing aspect of the cop on his trail. Joseph Crowley will stick with the pursuit no matter how difficult it is to work out what is driving Carrana, what the real motivation is.
There is quite a hefty dose of cop-jep, and some rather worrying potential consequences for everyone involved as somebody as utterly and completely amoral as Carrana presses on with his deadly plan. There is quite a lot of violence which is all the more discomforting because the perpetrator is just so very matter of fact about the whole thing. And there's a twitch in the tail that whilst not hard to see coming, nonetheless made me sit up and pay attention. Starting out on THE SILVER DAGGER I was extremely sceptical. Ended up nothing of the sort.