It’s amazing the amount of sin that the Original Sin begat. Murder, rape, sexual abuse, and the lesser evils such as theft. Katherine Anne Tolliver, the heroine in Getting Off, Lawrence Block's new novel (writing as Jill Emerson, Titan Books, $25.99), suffered all of those except for murder, and she has become practiced in some of them, including murder, in the five or so years since she murdered her parents. Her father had it coming; he sexually abused her for years until he suffered a spate of guilt and “dumped” his teenage daughter. It was a rejection that left her devastated, until she realized that what they were doing was wrong, and took matters into her own hands.
Her father’s abuse left her scarred, but she also has a healthy libido, one that isn’t fully satisfied unless she kills the man she’s just coupled with. Like a human preying mantis, she spends her time picking up men and doing away with them, taking what money they have, changing her name and moving from town to town. She works occasionally, but doesn’t lack a steady supply of men to prey on: traveling salesmen looking for some on the side, yuppie power brokers eager to prove their superiority, or just plain assholes who are better off removed from the gene pool. Aggression is not her game; she doesn’t need it with her youth, looks, and body - men come to her. But that changes when she realizes there are five men who can still talk about having sex with her, what she calls her “personal alumni association.” So begins a quest to track them down, have sex with them one last time, and then eliminate them in an effort “to regrow her psychic hymen by killing every man who ever had sex with her.”
Katherine, or Maggie, or whatever her name du jour, is well versed in both sex and murder, a tough education for someone at the tender age of 23, but it’s an education that she pursued. She’s not all jizz and blood though. She found time to educate herself in other ways even though “after high school was just a blur.” She knows the difference between “who” and “whom,” and can even quote some poetry; Robert Browning is her favorite. That type of education seems a little out of place for a murderer with barely a high school education. But this is the 21st century, and there are things like the Internet to satisfy an inquisitive nature. She has the time, and she puts it to good use.
The subtitle is "A Novel of Sex and Violence," but this is no murder mystery, and not much of a crime story. Our girl worries about the police, but they’re largely absent - there are no chase scenes or anything remotely akin to Sharon Stone’s hijinks in the movie Basic Instinct. The sex and violence are not even graphic. Many of the murders are not violent - a quick ice pick between the ribs to a sleeping man, or a certain type of poison in his drink - although she does display an ironic, sexual cruelty from time to time. The knowledge that she will succeed breeds an anticlimax as the bodies pile up. But her quest to eliminate her “personal alumni association” leads to introspection and hope that “maybe the relentless cycle of couple and kill and couple and kill had finally run its course.” Getting Off turns into a coming of age story for a psychopath. Some may claim that a psychopath has a lot of room for growth, but the author has built such empathy for her, that she doesn’t seem psychopathic. You want her to find satisfaction and happiness, even one that doesn’t require murder. She does, in an unexpected progression that almost leaves you smiling - almost, but not quite. Isn’t that the best kind?
The author, Lawrence Block, is writing under the pen name of Jill Emerson, yet on the cover, the name “Lawrence Block” is in big, block letters, while the name “Jill Emerson” is in much smaller print.
Block is an award winning author, and it’s baffling why an established author would write under a pen name, but then put his real name in the larger print. What’s the point? The only point that comes to mind is that the protagonist is female, and perhaps he felt that a female author would have a little more “author-ity” writing about a female protagonist. That’s not giving much credit to the reader, but it might also be true - that is if the reader didn’t know that the author is male. It’s an unnecessary artifice that ultimately detracts from the book. Block, or Emerson if you must, has constructed an entertaining tale that doesn’t require any publicity stunts. The story can sell itself, with or without the media ploys.
By Rebecca Ammon
Her father’s abuse left her scarred, but she also has a healthy libido, one that isn’t fully satisfied unless she kills the man she’s just coupled with. Like a human preying mantis, she spends her time picking up men and doing away with them, taking what money they have, changing her name and moving from town to town. She works occasionally, but doesn’t lack a steady supply of men to prey on: traveling salesmen looking for some on the side, yuppie power brokers eager to prove their superiority, or just plain assholes who are better off removed from the gene pool. Aggression is not her game; she doesn’t need it with her youth, looks, and body - men come to her. But that changes when she realizes there are five men who can still talk about having sex with her, what she calls her “personal alumni association.” So begins a quest to track them down, have sex with them one last time, and then eliminate them in an effort “to regrow her psychic hymen by killing every man who ever had sex with her.”
Katherine, or Maggie, or whatever her name du jour, is well versed in both sex and murder, a tough education for someone at the tender age of 23, but it’s an education that she pursued. She’s not all jizz and blood though. She found time to educate herself in other ways even though “after high school was just a blur.” She knows the difference between “who” and “whom,” and can even quote some poetry; Robert Browning is her favorite. That type of education seems a little out of place for a murderer with barely a high school education. But this is the 21st century, and there are things like the Internet to satisfy an inquisitive nature. She has the time, and she puts it to good use.
The subtitle is "A Novel of Sex and Violence," but this is no murder mystery, and not much of a crime story. Our girl worries about the police, but they’re largely absent - there are no chase scenes or anything remotely akin to Sharon Stone’s hijinks in the movie Basic Instinct. The sex and violence are not even graphic. Many of the murders are not violent - a quick ice pick between the ribs to a sleeping man, or a certain type of poison in his drink - although she does display an ironic, sexual cruelty from time to time. The knowledge that she will succeed breeds an anticlimax as the bodies pile up. But her quest to eliminate her “personal alumni association” leads to introspection and hope that “maybe the relentless cycle of couple and kill and couple and kill had finally run its course.” Getting Off turns into a coming of age story for a psychopath. Some may claim that a psychopath has a lot of room for growth, but the author has built such empathy for her, that she doesn’t seem psychopathic. You want her to find satisfaction and happiness, even one that doesn’t require murder. She does, in an unexpected progression that almost leaves you smiling - almost, but not quite. Isn’t that the best kind?
The author, Lawrence Block, is writing under the pen name of Jill Emerson, yet on the cover, the name “Lawrence Block” is in big, block letters, while the name “Jill Emerson” is in much smaller print.
Block is an award winning author, and it’s baffling why an established author would write under a pen name, but then put his real name in the larger print. What’s the point? The only point that comes to mind is that the protagonist is female, and perhaps he felt that a female author would have a little more “author-ity” writing about a female protagonist. That’s not giving much credit to the reader, but it might also be true - that is if the reader didn’t know that the author is male. It’s an unnecessary artifice that ultimately detracts from the book. Block, or Emerson if you must, has constructed an entertaining tale that doesn’t require any publicity stunts. The story can sell itself, with or without the media ploys.
By Rebecca Ammon
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