Did the violence and abandonment the killer survived by age four mark him for failure? for violence? What if he had grown up with his brother instead of being told his baby brother had died the day his mother abandoned them? Had his mother sent the letters she wrote him instead of remaining essentially in hiding would he have turned out differently?

Was there any point in his life when he could have taken a different path? His brother grows up to be a “fine young man” by anyone’s definition. I admired how well these voices worked to present a thorough picture of how the killer came to be. This all worked to make Notes on an Execution much more than a crime novel. Time is given to his mother, the abuse she suffered at the hands of the killer’s father, how she escaped him by leaving her two sons, the four-year-old future killer and his infant brother behind when she escaped to a commune in California the girls he grew up with after being placed in foster care and failing to find a family that would keep him, one of whom becomes his first victim, the other becomes the detective who eventually arrests him the young woman he marries and her twin sister who always suspects something is wrong with him and finally, the niece he never knew he had who finds him after her father dies and makes him a part of her family and the restaurant business they run. The bulk of the book switches point of view between a set of women whose lives intersect with the killer’s. A gimmick that worked very well as far as I’m concerned. This turned out to be pretty riveting stuff, made more immediate by the use of second person present. He does not die until the final pages of the novel. He reviews key incidents in his own life, including the crimes he committed, what his legacy might be, what it feels like to experience death row and the routine of his execution. The killer’s point of view comes in the second person present tense as he goes through his final day. No way I’m reading 300 pages of second person present tense. I admit, I skipped ahead to make sure this wasn’t going to last the entire novel. I’m not a fan of the present tense or of the second person. You are in a cell, convicted of multiple murders, awaiting your execution. The trouble starts with the opening scene told in the second person present. You won’t find that kind of comfort in Danya Kukafka’s Notes on an Execution. A plot that moves to the comfort a solved puzzle brings. Readers of crime fiction don’t necessarily want to be challenged with experimentation or troublesome themes. Much of the time the formula is part of the fun. Someone I know, not a fan, described it as too “rat-a-tat-tat” for his taste.

I am a fan of crime fiction, but I’ll admit the genre can be a bit stale at times.

Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka