Road to Perdition, by Max Allan Collins

For those who have seen the movie (that includes me), the book holds little surprise. I didn't like the movie very much and the book didn't do much to improve matters. I suppose the reason is that the plot plays out as a Greek tragedy. We know where the story is headed towards and are passive observers instead of being drawn into the minds of the characters.

When you write a story with a narrator, the narrator changes the perspective of the story. It changes our attitude towards the characters. It also prevents us from understanding the motivations of everyone except the narrator, who has to take guesses at them. And it hides certain events unless the author uses some other mechanism (like newspaper stories or second-information) to reveal that to the reader.

There are excellent novels that have narrators, but "Road to Perdition" is not one of them. It keeps its main character, Michael O'Sullivan, at arm's length when the reader should really be involved with his grief, suffering and anger. The death of Michael's family happens for very clumsy reasons: the crime mob's reasons should have been stronger to take such drastic actions. There is too much action and too little pause for thought and story development. A disappointment.

Tags: comics fiction