The Killing Lessons by Saul Black

Just because a thing is true
doesn't mean it can't be used cruelly.

I had a very illuminating conversation with a former-teacher-turned-current-writer-and-meditation-expert yesterday* wherein I was gently reminded how difficult and exposing it is to write of experiences that hasn’t been lived by the writer. It was in relation to a Hindu character I had sketched very briefly having a Damascene-type experience due to the convergence of his faded belief system and three iterations of one other person from multiple realities. Anyway, recalling Saul Black’s first Valerie Hart novel, I am suddenly struck by how similar in parts it is to my recollection of a couple of Black’s slightly more literary novels written under his naked nom-de-naissance, Glen Duncan.

Hope and Love Remains, his first two published novels (prior to one of my most recommended books when I was a bookseller, I, Lucifer**) include occasionally gruesome, occasionally pornographic depictions of male sexuality and its consequences on male characters’ abilities to sustain healthy relationships with women. I get the two confused (the books, not the consequences, although I can’t easily check given most of my library still resides on the shelves of a former home) but can distinctly remember being pretty uncomfortable reading passages about sexual perversion and obsession with pornography. That this motif, of sexual exploitation and in this case extreme violence captured on the small screen, occurs here again speaks to me of a writer worried about his own proclivities – hopefully they only take form on the page – and I totally get why he created a literary alter-ego behind which to hide his exploration of male sexual violence towards women. That he balances this with some pretty ballsy, resilient and resolute female leads could also be a way to show his remorse and contempt for those feelings. It doesn’t hurt that the male perpetrators are near complete idiots, burning with inarticulate incel rage and wanting to demean, debase, and destroy as many women as it takes to make them feel better.

In considering his previous books, I am also drawn to a memory of A Day And A Night And A Day in which character Augustus Rose hides away on a Scottish island to die, something akin to the motivations of character Angelo who is hiding himself in a hut in the woods in which Nell, aged 10, on the run from the killers she witnessed murdering her mother and brother, finds herself recuperating after a nasty fall into a ravine. Nell is another strong female character whose story, if I’m honest, could have been more to the forefront, but provides a foil for an ailing literary type tortured by demons. Augustus also experiences some pretty gruesome torture if memory serves.

So many recurring themes!

To give some narrative context to those review completists who like that sort of thing, homicide Detective Valerie Hart is an addict, struggling to balance her disintegrating personal life with the demands of capturing serial killers on a spree across America, and whose latest victims (and first of the novel) are the aforementioned lonely widow and son. Nell, daughter, escapes and must survive the harsh Colorado winter with virtually crippled writer-in-hiding Angelo, with no idea if the killers will find them and finish the job. Meanwhile, Claudia is introduced and is, of course, as any female character who comes along is bound to be, abducted and tortured, shown graphic sexual acts and murders by the killers, with the expectation that she is next. Police work, police work, police work, some admirable resistance from Claudia, and hey presto, resolution.

Back to my original thought and it concerns me that so much of the work of an author who I truly admire revolves around sexual violence, given we tend to write what we know (at least what we write best is often that). I hear he travelled India with his father for what his Wikipedia page tells us was “part roots odyssey, part research” for his book The Bloodstone Papers, to live the experience of his heritage and to give verisimilitude to his collation of parental vignettes. Therefore, to have ready access to quite so much gruesome imagery, trotted out regularly and not thoughtlessly across his many books should probably make me more alarmed than I am. I’m happy to live in ignorance however, and as a fan of John Connolly’s Charlie Parker novels, as well as the Ed McBain and Chester Himes canons, perhaps I should be more concerned that I’m drawn to these sorts of books myself…

In any event, READ MORE GLEN DUNCAN stroke SAUL BLACK, as I have done, and look out for a review of book two very soon!***


*For reference, yesterday is the 21st August 2024, a mere 17 months after starting to read this book – is that a new record?

**Having looked back, I CANNOT BELIEVE that I haven’t re-read and re-reviewed I, Lucifer on this blog ever, something I will now endeavour to fix post haste.

***By current estimates, around April 2025

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