IT BEGINS... AGAIN

A Book Review on Black Lightning

“Today won’t end it. How will you feel, Anne? When I’m dead, and it all starts again, how will you feel?”

A few hours before his execution, Richard Kraven said those words to Anne Jeffers, a Seattle journalist who followed his story and presented evidences through her articles that made him guilty of murdering people. Within days after Kraven’s execution, the city is once again stunned by murders, in which the method was similar to Kraven’s: The victims’ chest was torn open, the organs were out from where they should be.

How could this happen? Kraven is dead. Anne herself witnessed on how he died by a surge of electricity that ran through his body in an electric chair.

That was one of the questions that would leave the mind of the reader of Black Lightning. Black Lightning is a mystery novel written by author John Saul, who also wrote Guardian and The Homing.

The novel leaves a mystery on the reader’s mind. As the reader flips the pages of the book, it cannot be avoided to ask on how could it happen or who is the killer.

The style of the author is that the focus is not always on the main protagonist, Anne Jeffers, on all chapters, but he focuses some of the chapters on other characters. Some of the chapters are focused on the mystery killer himself, and narrates on what he was doing, but still leaving his identity hanging until the novel reveals it at the almost end of the book.

The characters’ appearance and activities, the setting, and the things around are well described by the author. Everything was detailed from the positioning of the items to the movements of the characters. He even included a detailed view on what the character was thinking in that short time span, such as the movie that came into Anne’s mind before Kraven’s execution.

This novel, however, is not suitable for very young readers. The book contains details that are not for the young mind such as how the killer murders his victims, and even sex.

It ends, and it begins again. How would you feel when someone you thought dead has returned? What’s worse, he may have returned for a reason: He would come for you.