Review: Mister Candid

Who is Mister Candid? For nearly twenty years, rumors, half-voiced whispers and unsupported anecdotes have persisted about a man who is the ultimate avenging angel--travelling around the country skillfully removing the dregs of society, the child-killers, pedophiles, and flummoxing the drug trade in the process. But does he even exist? The FBI officially says no. Newspaper editorials come out against the idea. But there's a story, and a complicated one at that, linked by the barest of threads. A wizened, dying woman in a Florida rest home. A photograph of a laughing young man leaning against the hood of a Cadillac El Dorado. And the mysterious disappearance of the Kanes, a rich, overprivileged East Hampton family, seventeen years before...

Mister Candid doesn't just exist, he's about to give up the nomadic lifestyle he's led for far too long. But he's also being chased by different people for different reasons. There's O'Flanagan, the burnt-out ex-NYPD (now based in Miami) who just wants to get answer to the most burning question--why? There's Bronwen, once a nurse at the rest home, now transplanted to New York turning tricks and hoping against hope to find the man of her dreams. There's the father of child brutally murdered by a serial killer who's out of reach from the law. And then there's Charlie "Chum" Kane--a cipher, a shadow of his former self, who's searching for a way to reconcile his tangled family history to find some sort of redemption.

This, Jules Hardy's second book (after the much acclaimed ALTERED LAND)is a difficult book to summarize. It's less a whodunit, because we find out who Mister Candid is fairly early on, than a carefully crafted psychological study of what drives someone to seek revenge and the fine line between heroism and evil. It's also a chronicle of a family so dysfunctional it makes Jacobean drama seem like fluffy comedy. It's disturbing, unflinching and wholly uncomfortable. It could have easily, oh so easily, descended into over-the-top melodrama, but is saved by Hardy's straight-ahead prose style and the blistering pace.

When I turned the final page, I gasped for breath, trying desperate to regain some equilibrium. It's the kind of book that alters your mind, makes you think, and more importantly, makes you question ideas about justice, morality, and family times. MISTER CANDID is, quite simply, bloody brilliant. Read it, and see for yourself.

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Sarah - RAM

Book Review: Mister Candid