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Acts of violence, David Ryan Jahn, 2009
Acts of violence, is a very dark thriller wrote by Ryan David Jahn, inspired by a real story, the murder of Catherine Genovese.
That’s why I have chosen to read and introduce this book.
The story takes place in the 1960’s in New York. It begins with the murder of Kat Marino, a young woman who goes home after her night work. Many neighbors are witness of the scene but nobody call the police, convinced that someone else has already done it. Even more, everyone have his thoughts occupied somewhere else.
The story is about these neighbors. There are Franck, a racist and corrupt policeman, Patrick who’s forced to abandon his sick mother, Larry who cheats on his wife, Thomas who wants to commit suicide because he is gay, and Peter who has conviced his wife to practice swinger. There are also David who save Nathan’s life, while he sexually abused him on the past.
I like this novel because it begins with a strong first plot, the cold-blooded murder of Kat that leads us to the subplots, the neighbors' life whose finally become central. The way he chose to write his novel bring us into the lives of each character.
I really appreciate the very beginning of the novel, the scene of murder, because it puts us directly in the atmosphere of the book, using horrifying details.
There was not a passage that i really dislike, but the party where we discover Kat’s neighbors is frustrating because we still have the murder in mind.
I chose to present this book because I really appreciate dark thrillers. The fact that Ryan David Jahn chose a true story for his novel makes the thing most interesting to me.
He illustrate in this book the "bystander effect", a king of passivity when someone needs you. As the author has made us into their lives we feel a sort of compassion despite the fact that we can also see a kind of selfishness, everyone has better things to do and think.
Being deriver from a true story, this novel is very poignant because it reveals an aspect of human nature.
NEGRIT Maëlys
