THE BABY KILLERS: Declan Burke

Over at Crime Always Pays, Declan Burke made an offer to send a copy of his latest, revised, not yet published novel THE BABY KILLERS, to any followers of CAP that might be interested in giving it a read. Having both read and very much enjoyed his previous novels THE BIG-O and CRIME ALWAYS PAYS, I of course, accepted the offer. I would think that most visitors to this blog are already familiar with Declan and his work, so when I finished reading it, I thought long and hard when trying to put together my take, a review if you will, on my experience. I'm not talking about a back-slapping, thank's mate, help the cause type of  review. Although I am a fan, it was going to be non-biased review and if I didn't like the story, I knew I would have to shoot staight and tell Declan the truth.  In other words, I was the one taking the risk here. My blog followers and other writer friends can smell a rat a mile away and I was not going to bullshit them either.  Here is what I came up with.

"If you took Palahniuk's "Fight Club", Ellis' "American Psycho", and King's "Secret Garden, Secret Window", combined them with Burke's mastery of dialogue, character, and the human condition, then removed the gratuitous violence, the end result would be Burke's latest and most impressive novel to date,"The Baby Killers". An excellent read that continually ratchets up the intrigue and suspense factors as it builds toward the tremendous finale, while at the same time providing an intense, no holds barred, behind the scenes introspection into the psyche of the writer and his process."

If you follow CAP, you'll know about the various incarnations, roadblocks to publication, and publishing plans this novel has gone through. The one thing that really pissed me off as I read TBK is the "not commercially viable" tag. This is a total crock of shit and just another example of the publishing industry having their heads up their asses. Hopefully, this version of TBK changes all that.