Mister Candid

by Jules Hardy

'He's responsible for the deaths of many people. But everything I've learned about him makes me believe he's fundamentally a good person. Sounds crazy doesn't it? How can he be a good person?' For seventeen years the FBI have been hunting down a killer, a killer with a difference. His victims are the sickos the law couldn't touch. But are his actions those of a maniac or a saviour? And what happened to turn him into Mr Candid? Brought into a life of privilege and wealth on America's East Coast, Charlie Kane was a child prodigy. Reading the New York Times at the age of three, a mathematical genius at thirteen, this gentle, handsome boy went to Harvard University where he found the love of his life and a place in the world. Until one Thanksgiving, seventeen years ago, when Charlie and the entire Kane family all but vanished.

• ISBN10: 0743429060
• ISBN13: 9780743429061
• Publish Date: 1 September 2003 (first published 7 April 2003)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Simon & Schuster
• Format: Paperback (A-Format (178x111 mm))
• Pages: 416
• Language: English

Reviews

[wyvernfriend]

Librarything guessed I wouldn't like this and it was almost right. It is one of those reads that left me with a vaguely bad taste in my mouth at the end of it but still managed to keep me reading (which is why it gets 3* rather than lower). There were times that I could see what the writer was doing through the text and there were times it jarred badly on my liking of it. Still it was readable and Charlie "Chum" Kane was an interesting character. The ending did feel quite rushed.

There's a man out there killing pedophiles. Feared by those he hunts and both admired and chased by the legal authorities this is a story of who he is and how he comes to be. Lots of asides and looking into the past it's a story that I felt had issues with determining where it wanted to be. It was neither thriller or literary novel but was trying to be both.

Not bad but it felt like the author could do better. I'm not sure I'm willing to explore to see.