Whenever I wanted to tell people around me what book I was reading and how impressed I was with it, they would ask me, "Why are you even reading THIS?". But I had several reasons to finish this one.
At the end of last year, I had too many disappointment books that I'd abandoned without finishing, and I wanted to read some reliable author. John Marrs, author of The Good Samaritan, a book that had me enthralled, couldn't fool me. I mean, he couldn't, could he? That's why I picked up The Last Victim. Basically, the story is pretty normal for a detective-thriller: a mentally deranged man thinks a few people are responsible for his troubles, so he takes revenge on them as best he can. And the police catch him. Here I have no complaints about the novel. But the descriptions of, so to speak, normal people, their thoughts, feelings, and motivations caused me some consternation.
John Marrs is the author of #1 Best Sellers The One, The Good Samaritan, When You Disappeared, The Vacation, Her Last Move, The Passengers, The Minders and What Lies Between Us. Keep It In The Family and The Marriage Act are released soon. What Lies won the International Thriller Writers' Best Paperback of 2021 award. The One has been translated into 30 different languages and is to be turned into an eight-part Netflix series starting in autumn 2020. After working as a journalist for 25-years interviewing celebrities from the world of television, film and music for national newspapers and magazines, he is now a full-time writer.
I was wading through the weirdness, which turned into mild nonsense, and I thought, well, now, now, on the next page everything will be explained, and unexpectedly. That's what you can't take away from Marrs, it's the element of surprise. You're reading, building an image of the character in your head, and then - HOBA! And everything takes a slightly different turn.
Here's one of the main characters, Rebecca, works in the police force, really wants to build a career, is worried about being pushed around by her superiors and not seeing her efforts. Complains that women in the police force are treated with prejudice. And then BOOM! Rebecca turns out to be a single mom. Okay, we're sympathetic and understanding. BLEEP! Her daughter has Down syndrome. Okay. A single mom with Down's wants to pursue a career in police work? Okay. BOBA! Rebecca is not the girl's biological mother. Uh, uh... Adoption? BOOTH! This is the daughter of Rebecca's sister, who died as a result of domestic violence at the hands of her husband, and Rebecca and her mother (i.e., the girl's grandmother) have taken custody of her.
All of this information is given in doses, each HOBA in its own chapter. We have three main characters - Rebecca, her partner Joe, and the actual criminal Dominic. The chapters about each alternate and each has a different HOBA for each character. In each "different" chapter, Rebecca takes turns reflecting on the themes of "I'm a bad mother" and "How single mothers are prevented from building a career." Basically, she's both a no good mother and a shitty employee. All her motherly duties in the book are a kiss in the morning, a kiss in the evening, and suffering through "I'm a bad mom."
But okay, maybe she's all about work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. London's up in arms over a maniac who's killed four people in a matter of days. The police are running amok. Rebecca's been asked to join the core team and she's always whining about how boring her job is. Another murder, 7:00 a.m. briefing, but Rebecca's not there. Where is she? Maybe crawling in the furrow with a gun? Or chasing the bad guy cross-country? Uh, no, you didn't. She's at a remedial school reading fairy tales to retarded kids. She's the one with the sudden maternal instinct. And she came to work at half past 12, in time for the next meeting, hiding from her superiors. Why doesn't anyone know why she's not assigned a responsible job?
By the way, it's not just Rebecca who's reflexive. It's the same with other characters. Each character has his own "vavka" in his head, and they pick it constantly. Because of this, the narrative drags on ungodly. One in each chapter can't decide whether to go to work or to read fairy tales, the other suffers for her sister who disappeared 26 years ago, the third in each "his" chapter mutters that, say, they made me suffer, and shchaz I will take revenge on them all, and terribly. And so on and so forth.
To be honest, I was a bit taken aback by the whole thing. I mean, is Marrs really serious about writing such nonsense? And then Rebecca's flirting. Her new partner Joe is so handsome, he's so into her that she shaved her legs on her way to work for the first time in a month. Can you imagine the power of feelings? And he says to her, "Come to my hayloft for dinner and we'll discuss the problems of investigation. So Rebecca put on lipstick, bought wine and came to visit. And then HOBA her door opens a young man and says: "Hello, paint the fence. Let me introduce myself. I'm Matt, Joe's husband. How? Didn't that guy tell you anything?" And she sits at her desk like a fool with her lips painted and her legs shaved while these hotties coo in love. And yes, they didn't get to discuss the investigation. Somehow it didn't work out.
After this episode, I decided that Marrs was just trolling readers. He collected in the novel so many stamps, ponapihvalu so many actual problems that I decided that this is a parody of modern society and detective novels. Here's a short list of the following: single mother, a child with Down's syndrome, a woman in the police, combining motherhood and work, domestic violence, transgenderism, same-sex couples, an alcoholic mother, a tyrant father, a policeman with phenomenal abilities, a policeman with mental and moral trauma, child prostitution, a psychopath (pathological jealousy) in the family, sex at work, pedophilia, severe illness, etc. And the cherry on the cake is the snotty-sweet ending, luscious beyond belief.
And still I believed in the best, thought it was trolling, exactly until I got to the list of acknowledgements and dedications, where Marrs mentions his mom, and dad, and dog, and all the emergency workers of the world, as well as the people who took him on the ferry and told him about the subway. I mean, it was all very serious.
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