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Imagine being a fly on the wall in the brain of a cold-blooded murderer. What prompts someone to kill? What catalyst led them down that path? What was their story? In Cope’s crime narrative, there is less glorification of the mobster life and more character construction. Using the first-person point-of-view of the main character, Joey, the novel gives audiences a direct seat into the mind of a killer.
The work opens up with a slew of thoughts from Joey as he awaits his target. Within moments, with one silent bullet, he snuffs a life out. Yet, it is his deeply philosophical introspection that stays with the reader. Like a robot, he mechanically follows his instructions, refusing to learn anything about his victim. By doing so, the dehumanization remains in place, making it easy to commit the deed and simply forget about it.
While the book goes deep into the hierarchy of Detroit mobsters and has no shortage of action-packed scenes, it is undoubtedly the internal struggle, however subtle, between Joey the mobster/psychopath and his inner voice, the one that constantly chimes in with declarations of just how far gone he is, that stands out. Interestingly, Joey’s childhood is filled with normalcy, from Boy Scouts to swimming lessons, and though he lost his father at ten, he admits that this did not devastate him. Still, he sees high school as a prison and college as fool’s gold for those unsure of their path. Commentary on these universal conundrums adds a layer of humanness that is unusual and typically lacking in portrayals of killers in fiction. From the FBI to the Mafia, all the elements of a thrilling mob story are present in the narrative. Yet the reader is most drawn to Joey’s mental composition, making this novel a unique read.