Customer Reviews

Blackburn: A Novel

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BLACKBURN is one of those books that will change you. Once you've read it, you will never see the world the same way again. There are no convenient blacks and whites in this brilliant novel. Blackburn is a man we understand and sympathize with. EVEN WHEN HE KILLS PEOPLE! We laugh and cheer. EVEN WHEN HE KILLS PEOPLE! And when we think about that, we shudder because we know that what he's doing is WRONG, but it feels so right and that, my friends, is a very disturbing thing to think. This is one of those books you will never forget. Bradley Denton has turned out a modern classic that deserves a much wider audience. The question remains, though, and you can take this as a challenge if you like: Do you have what it takes to read this book? If so, you will never be the same.

A brave, intelligent, thrilling, moving novel about a young man who takes action against what he deems to be wrong -- through violence. Funny, chilling, possibly a serial killer book, and very possibly not, it's a story that actually manages to challenge your moral sense, but not because it is particularly violent (although it is), rather because you end up sympathizing with the main character to the point where you accept his actions as valid, and you must sit down and ask yourself what all this means. I never did that with any book or film before, but I did with this one: It makes you think. Really. This is no wishy-washy criticism of society, but a harrowing, highly personal journey to the proverbial heart of darkness, whose themes include righteousness, responsibility, freedom (all sorts), and the consequences of one's actions -- implicit (as in the social implications of a failed upbringing) as well explicit (as in physical violence).

It's refreshing to find that the word "media" rarely (if ever) appears in the novel; it simply doesn't seek to blame the violence of a nation on the media. Being an often deadpan, deeply ironic satire, this is a very, very funny book; but you'll cry as much as you will laugh. Jimmy Blackburn is a memorable character -- up there with the best of them -- and this is a book I could quote endlessly. Even though this is Important Literature it's immensely readable as well (usually a good combination).

While Denton does not indulge in preaching (although there absolutely is a "modern society made me" theme) -- I believe the answer to the question of the righteousness of Blackburn's actions can only be found in your own moral stance. It should be an eye-opener even to the most jaded reader. As such, I heartily recommend this book to any citizen of the modern world.

I read this book about 5 years ago and scenes from it still crop up in my mind out of the blue for no reason. I can't explain this. I guess it's one of the best books I've ever read.

All of us have thought about killing other people. It might be the mechanic who cheated you, the professor who unfairly gave you a bad grade, etc. That being said, Blackburn is a book in which the main character actually acts upon these urges.

Jimmy Blackburn has been put down all his life. His parents abuse him, and he's looked at as a failure in life. So, when a cruel police officer harasses him outside a church, Blackburn, having had enough, kills him. This begins a crusade against unfairness and immorality in society. Blackburn begins a crusade against those who wrong others and him.

The story is horrifying and thought provoking at the same time. Blackburn rises against society's ills. However, as the book winds down, he is seen not as a public crusader, but as a serial killer. Are his actions wrong because society doesn't condone murder or is he providing a public service by disposing of some of the scum out there? I found myself asking this question after finishing this book.

Read this now. It is not an easy read, but you will be the better for it once you finish.

Blackburn is a character study. To call him a "serial killer" is not doing the character justice, but rather limiting him. He has a heart, soul, and a code of ethics by which he lives, and by which he kills. There is more to this book than Jimmy Blackburn and his victims. It is about family, and society, and how the character exists within each, and how each affect the character. When I finished this book, I found that I actually missed having Jimmy Blackburn around. I believe Bradley Denton felt this way too, and to bring closure to the character wrote the story "Blackburn Bakes Cookies" for his book One Day Closer To Death. I could speak at length about Blackburn, and not do it justice. I cannot recommend this book enough.

Generally, when a serious book set in modern America features a person who murders twenty people, that person is not the star, you don't find yourself cheering him on, and you aren't sad when the killing spree comes to an end. In Blackburn, Bradley Denton makes all of that happen.

Blackburn follows the life of Jimmy Blackburn, told through a series of nineteen stories spanning his life. The book has an intriguing structure, alternating stories called things like "Victim Number Two" (which is the tantalizing first one) with numbered and named chapters (the second chapter is actually called "One: Blackburn and the Blind Man"). The chapters alternate between "Victim" and "numbered and named" chapters for the rest of the book. I found this structure terribly interesting, especially beginning with "Victim Number Two". For a long time we are left wondering who victim number one was. His father? The bully? Who?

In the book, young Jimmy Blackburn is tormented by his father and various other thugs and shysters. While this formula could be used to make Blackburn into a victim, carrying out his violent deeds because of lingering pain of his childhood, Denton doesn't take it that direction. Instead, the events of Jimmy Blackburn's childhood lead him to an inexorable decision. He will not be a victim, he will be a perpetrator, a righter of wrong, a sticker-up for the downtrodden, an anti-hero. And we are along for the ride, holding on and hoping for the best and knowing it can't end well.

From beginning to end, the book is excellent, compelling, and surprisingly funny. The chapter with the encyclopedia salesman is hilarious, and the chapter with the car repair scam artists is wicked fun. There are lots of dogs along the way. You could make a case that without the dogs there wouldn't have been a story at all. It's hard not to like a guy who likes dogs as much as Blackburn does. Denton even takes some fun shots at himself, inserting an author of a book very much like this one into the narrative. It is, to say the least, interesting when Blackburn confronts him. The most compelling part of the story, though, is when Blackburn runs into another serial killer, only the evil kind. Perhaps it's meaningful that this encounter is the beginning of the end for Blackburn.

Toward the end of the book there is, to me, the most satisfying exchange, so cool that I have to share it here at the risk of spoiling something for someone. It should come as no surprise that Blackburn finds himself in the custody of the police. Here, Blackburn has decided to be forthright with them, but his honesty is not appreciated. There are no good cops in this book. The jerky DPS troopers are escorting him in shackles and handcuffs back to the jail after his preliminary hearing when Blackburn tells them he has killed men, but never a woman. "How many men?" the first trooper asks. "Just so we know how scared we should be," the second says. "Eighteen," Blackburn says. "So far." It helps the excitement of the moment that the exchange takes place in the chapter called "Victim Number Nineteen". Wicked fun.

Blackburn is a great book, funny and exciting and sad. If it doesn't make you cheer for the killer and wail at the unjust world when he doesn't get to kill more people, there's something wrong with you.

Having grown up within a few miles of the town on which Bradley Denton bases the fictional "Wantoda," home of Jimmy Blackburn, I am in awe of what Denton has created with this remarkable novel. Blackburn is a picture of rural America that is uniquely complex and compelling. In our honest moments, we must admit that the type of people who helped turn Blackburn into a serial killer exist everywhere in every time and the pressures that shape his destiny are terrifyingly familiar to all of us. Blackburn, in short, isn't that different from the rest of us and our friends. Denton underlines this premise by taking us through the catalog of Blackburn's victims and the locales span the breadth and depth of America. The people Blackburn befriend are starkly average and familiar to us all. The bullies and villains who prey on them like many we have all met and at whose hands we have all suffered. The difference, of course, is that Blackburn kills them for their sins. In some ways, the most terrifying thing about this book is that we have all been the simple folks Blackburn champions, we have all suffered at the hands of those against whom they struggle, and we have all imagined dispensing brutal and violent justice precisely in the manner Blackburn does. This book is a dark and complex tale filled with laughter and tears, often in the same scenes. It has no parallel in fiction, in my opinion. It creates simply the most sympathetic anti-hero in all of literature and spreads his guilt among us all. For anyone interested in understanding what can make someone a killer, this book should not be missed.

Bradley Denton's "Blackburn" is an astonishingly original novel and a complete departure from the over-formulated serial killer genre. The novel is written in a curious style, shifting between scenes in which Jimmy Blackburn kills his victims - all liar, cheaters, and other blights upon society - and scenes from his life, beginning with his childhood. Blackburn grows up with an abusive father and a negligent mother, but Denton is not interested in using this difficult child as a pop-psychology explanation for Blackburn's strangely moral homicidal tendencies. If anything, he wants to sever any kind of cause and effect relationship in this novel that has much more interesting things on its plate than causality. Blackburn is an enigma, and his terrible childhood is part of that enigma, as are his many murders.

At times this is a very funny novel, and Blackburn has to be among the most likable murderers in literature. His moral system is skewed but enticing, and Denton does a wonderful job of keeping his protagonist both likable and utterly alien. The only flaw in this great book is that Denton sometimes lets his tone get away from him. Some of the scenes become silly rather than sardonic, and the weave of the book runs a bit thin at those moments. But they are few and far between, and for the most part this book a wildly successful in ways that multi-million dollar serial killer pot-boilers can never hope to emulate.

The character of Blackburn is an extremely deep and tormented one, although he seems to have more of a focus in life than those of us who do not go around killing our fellow man. He kills only those who have wronged society, and the reader is compelled to understand Blackburn's actions, to the point where I cried, hard, at this awkward hero's final chapter.

I read Blackburn, the Novel, over a year ago but did not write a review then because I feared I could not do it justice. I still doubt I can, but now feel I must add my comments about this beautifully written, astonishingly conceived, darkly humorous and profoundly moving story of a serial killer who lives by his own moral code.

Jimmy Blackburn is a tragic, darkly Christ-like figure, especially when lying on his narrow "cross," arms outstretched. He both horrifies us and, perversely, evokes sympathy, understanding, and our own deep, raw need for personal revenge which modern society dictates must be handled by the state. The irony of Blackburn is that in acting as judge, jury, and executioner, he IS the state, which is, of course, also his downfall.

Besides being a compelling character study and great read, Blackburn is, I believe, a comment on one aspect of society's own moral code and--depending on one's convictions--possible downfall: the death penalty. It is no coincidence that Blackburn ends up in Texas, a death penalty state, or that Bradley Denton resides in Austin, Texas, among legislators who define the state's position on capital punishment.

Whether Denton had political intentions or not in creating Blackburn--the book as well as the character--he has written a deeply thoughtful, engaging, even heartbreaking novel. As another reviewer wrote, Blackburn, the Novel, will change your life. Do yourself a favor. Buy it, read it. Today.