A Perfect Crime

I needed a couple of days to recover from this novel. By the end of it, I was drained yet enthralled. My reader-self was in pieces on the floor, but my inner psychopath was as delighted as the day I discovered [b:The Silence of the Lambs 23807 The Silence of the Lambs (Hannibal Lecter, #2) Thomas Harris https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1390426249s/23807.jpg 22533] and Hannibal Lecter. Hey, if a certain Ms Steele can have an inner goddess, I can have an inner psychopath. The premise is as it says on the tin - boy is tired of living, brutally murders a pretty and popular classmate, and goes on the run. Eventually he is caught, or rather, he turned himself in because he figured the cops are too slow and dumb to actually catch him. While the drama played out around him, he clinically toys with the China justice system and everyone swarming around his case - his mother, his aunt, his victim's mother, the investigating officers, the journalists. He spends a lot of time alone and contemplates suicide to end the boredom of endless waiting. We sit with him inside his head for the entire ride and sometimes there's nothing interesting going on in there, which I suspect is rather different from how traditional crime novels work. I also suspect this contributed to the number of reviews saying that the second half of the story was slow. Usually the action and frenzy builds towards the end of the novel when the heroes are closing in on the criminal before he gets away. In this case, Su (which is the boy's name, mentioned perhaps just once in the entire novel) wasn't interested in getting away. He just wanted them to solve the puzzle of why he did it and execute him already, and holy shit they're taking bloody forever.While his act was completely premeditated, we don't get a full grasp of why he did it until he explained it in the end. I admit that I'm not a fan of confessional monologues that run several pages, but I was pretty invested at this point and didn't mind that much. I found myself nodding along to his explanation (again with that inner psychopath thing).This is the first time I've read a novel from China that I enjoyed. I've decided not to name names that made me stop, and call it a day here.

In any story, I like to have diverse POV, so bad characters are always worthy to read. In this book, however, the killer is empty and boring; although I think that his motivation was interesting and had a philosophical side.

The story doesn't give a reason to keep reading, and if you read the first chapters and then skip right to the final chapter, you won't miss anything.


I won this book through GoodReads and I thank to the author for providing me this copy but this fact didn't influence the review.

This is not a mystery as you may expect from a novel about a murder. From the get go, the reader knows who the killer is, how his victim was chosen, how he planned the crime and his escape, and, most importantly, we know his motives, why he decided to commit such a gruesome, unforgivable act, even if his motives seem incomprehensible to any decent, moral human being. We know all this because the novel is told from the killer's perspective.

That's not to say this book doesn't raise any questions. In fact, there's probably more questions than answers. I couldn't help thinking (sadly) how relevant this book in these times. Killers of this type aren't uncommon. The bored, disillusioned, angry, young, white man. Someone who kills just because he's bored, just because he can, just because he hates his life, society and everyone in it. How did we, as a society, get to this point where these kind of murders are everyday occurrences? What starts off as a study of the motives of a killer becomes much more when you consider the wider implications for society as a whole.

To sum up, this novel wasn't what I was expecting. For one thing, it got me thinking, but was also a quick, well-paced read. Recommended.