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By Franco Attento, Special to
The Manila Times
“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 were torn open, the organs were out from where they
should be.
How could this happen? Kraven is
dead. Anne herself witnessed 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.
This mystery novel is
particularly effective: you can’t help but ask how could it happen
or who is the killer.
The focus is not always on the
main protagonist, Anne Jeffers. Some of the chapters are focused on
the mystery killer himself and narrates on what he was doing but
still leaves his identity hanging until the novel reveals it at the
almost end of the book.
The author vividly describes the
characters and the setting. 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.
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.
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