Review: A Voice in the Dark #1

Anybody who knows me personally will tell you that I hate the serial killer genre. Whenever I see a new movie, book, comic book or anything else about serial killers I tend to go on a big rant about it.  I’ve been doing this for a long time now, so long in fact that I no longer have anything to do with serial killer genre stuff at all. If I see ANYTHING that has a serial killer in it I’ll avoid it like the plague, refusing to give it a single second of my time.

I felt the same way about this book when I first heard about it, but I bought it anyway, against my better judgement. Why? Because the guy who owns my local comic book ensured me that this wasn’t just another serial killer book. It was different, better if you like. So I took his word for it, purchased the book and read it. My immediate reaction after finishing it?

Ah crap, it’s just another serial killer book.

But before I go into the book in depth I’ll briefly outline just why I dislike the serial killer genre. My main problem is that I feel that it feeds into a false perception of reality that you cannot trust or talk to anybody that exists outside of your immediate social circles. After all, why chance talking to somebody when he might be a devious serial killer?

I feel that the serial killer genre feeds into the fear porn paranoia that the mainstream media is pushing upon the masses, specifically through the news networks that focus on the incredibly rare instances where for example a child will go missing or a stranger will hurt another person. It feeds into this idea that life is unsafe, that we are better off isolating ourselves in our safe little homes, rather than taking a chance and actually living a happy, rewarding and self fulfilling existence. When people are fed on a diet of mainstream news fear porn and serial killer fiction what is created? An insular society of isolated and afraid people that are easy to manipulate and control by the real threat that exists in society. That threat being those in positions of authority. The people wearing uniforms who have killed billions all by the letter of the law, and all state sanctioned. Serial killer genre fiction plays into the false idea that the real threat is an imaginary bogeyman, not the real threat that we all need to be aware of.

Secondly, the serial killer genre feeds into a pornographic need for violence. Making boring, sick perverts who do exist in the real world look like the most interesting people in town. Real life serial killers are not twisted geniuses who play games with the cops or leave devious clues at the scene where grizzled detectives work to catch their cunning prey. They are boring little perverts who have no power in their lives, so pick on easy targets to feed their sexual perversions and make them appear more important than they actually are. Serial killers are boring perverts, they are not interesting, not clever, and not worth writing about.

Lastly, the idea of a serial killer in 2013 is pretty ridiculous. As has recently been revealed, we are increasingly living in a surveillance state, where everything we do is being monitored and recorded by the state. A real life serial killer living in a cosmopolitan, Western City these days would not be able to escape this surveillance. He would be caught in two minute flat by the cameras, smart phone trackers, DNA and God knows what else that entraps us all like a fish in the New World order barrel. Writing about serial killers now is ridiculous. They cannot survive, and therefore I cannot take their fictional stories seriously.

So that’s why I dislike serial killer genre fiction. Why do I dislike this book? Let me explain. It begins with the line,

‘Dear Diary, It’s been 72 days since I killed someone. It was my first time, and I’m afraid that it won’t be the last.’

What we are getting here then is a serial killer story from the point of view of the serial killer, much like the 1986 movie: Henry, Portrait of a serial killer.  A movie that I found extremely disgusting in that it glorifies the sickness of a man and how he murders people for his own personal gratification. A voice in the dark attempts to twist the genre by having a female serial killer who has had a happy childhood in a liberal home, and has killed her first victim because she’s an evil racist who bullied her predictably gay and adopted sister. What we have here is a perfect blend of liberal political correctness that we are all supposed to loudly applaud from the rooftops these days.

A racially mixed family, homosexual sister and a girl who has only murdered to get revenge for some bullying that led her gay sister to attempt suicide. Every single politically correct box is duly ticked, and I find it as cliché as you can get. This is a Daily Show with Jon Stewart approved book. All liberal university, pre Obama hope and change bullshit that actually means nothing when you look at in real depth.

It shows a sheep like conformity that parrots the mind programming of the 1970’s university campuses. Racism, sexism and homophobia are important issues, but they are not the most important issues of our times. This book is woefully out of step with these times, and the issues that we should all be focussing upon now. It sings from a fake nice collectivist song sheet as the real world goes on all around us, and the real issues of our times are ignored.

Real issues like the destruction of the family by removing fathers from the home. The pushing of homosexuality on young children to make them gender confused and to engage in sexual activities at an age younger when they should even be thinking about it. The pushing of the state as the father figure, to replace the father’s pushed away by family courts and social services. Female empowerment meaning being a single mum, despite all of the terrible things that have been well documented to happen to children, especially boys that lack a strong father figure in their lives. The pushing of dangerous vaccines and shots onto children that damage their immune systems for life. The illegal foreign wars that have ended millions of lives, all to prop up the banks and corporations that own the politicians of all parties. The complicit mainstream media that lie to the public and treat them like idiots.

All of these things and more are the real issues of 2013. Not serial killers, being gay and your skin pigmentation. This book is about things that have politically correct value, but no real world value at all. It’s a book that is begging to be applauded, and I’m sure that it will be, because who wants to say something bad about a book that deals with such ‘important’ issues? Well, me for one, because these issues are fake issues. That are not issues of 2013, they are issues of a liberal past, a past that has come to fruition in the world we are all living in today. Look around you. Look at the world you are living in. Are you living in heaven? Do you like this world?  Because this world is the legacy of 1970’s liberalism, the world that this book is still obsessed with today.

Let’s get back to the book. So why wasn’t the serial killer caught after her first crime? No DNA? No video camera evidence? No mobile phone evidence that would definitively show her to be at the scene of the crime? How does the writer deal with these issues? With one throwaway line,

‘How’d I pull it off? That’s a story for another day.’

Hang on, no it isn’t. Without dealing with these issues there is no story. It makes no sense, and I’m not prepared to just forget about it and wait for some explanations to fill in the plot holes later on.

Back to the book. So we have another serial killer operating as well, like it’s a normal thing these days to have serial killers nailing naked girls to trees in college campuses. It’s all disgusting, unrealistic, unbelievable and pornographically upsetting. And the detective investigating it is of course the uncle of the main female protagonist. Wow, what are the odds of that eh? Sounds pretty unbelievable doesn’t it? Perhaps serial killers are more common than I thought on College campuses, or perhaps this is just a load of liberal bullshit that is glorifying perverted murder and wrapping it up in political correctness to somehow make it all seem okay. The serial killer uses a Polaroid camera by the way, a piece of implausibility that even the writer himself has to acknowledge as being achronistic and slightly odd.

To fully illustrate the liberal minded blindness in this book I want to analyse a scene that takes place in a college room, this of course all makes sense as this is a book that could only come from a mind of somebody who has gone through the liberal indoctrination process of western universities. The professor in class asks the girl students (and most of the characters in this book are of course girls, as is befitting the 1970’s feminist, liberal mindset that the book originates from) about the increase in teen suicides (and this idea comes from the 1986 movie Heather’s). The only ideas expressed in the class are from the standpoint that young people kill themselves because of bullying, not the idea that young people kill themselves because they copy, like sheep, like feminist liberals. And like the bloody movie Heathers so cleverly points out. This comic book has completely missed the point of the movie, and suicides are blamed on bullies alone. Gay bashing bullies, of course.

The book also tries to convince the reader that outing yourself to your parents in 2013 is a huge issue that can lead to suicide. I’m sorry, but this is based in 2013 right, not 1973. Nobody gives a crap if you are gay or not these days. It’s fashionable to be gay; it’s not a big issue. Get over it, and stop victimising yourself with this crap.

And all along as the book trudges through 1970’s feminist, liberal issues we have a girl fantasying about killing people, using the same device that has been done to death many times before, and yes of course in heather’s, the movie that the writer of this book has evidently based most of it upon, only not with the original wit and insight of that movie unfortunately.

I’m not talking much about the plot here in this review because I found it boring, turgid and relentlessly unconvincing. A girl with no experience in social work, counselling or voicing her own radio show walks into the college campus radio station and is immediately given her own late night show where she gives out advice to her fellow students? Sorry, but this is not reality, this is a writer who has watched Hard Harry Christian Slater in the 1990 movie Pump up The Volume, and likes the idea of a radio show agony aunt. The writer has decided to cram it into his story, without thinking logically why this inexperienced girl would be given this highly sensitive and responsible role. She wouldn’t, this makes no sense.

So let’s end this now. I’ve been talking too long, and I’m beginning to bore myself, even more than this bloody tedious book bored me, and that was a lot.

A voice in the dark is right on, politically correct, university approved liberal blindness from the 1970’s. The characters are largely cardboard cut out, Oprah Winfrey approved bores that do not reflect contemporary society as it is in 2013. The book has been patched together from ideas that came out of two movies: Pump up the Volume of 1990, and Heather’s of 1986. It has no new insights, and even lacks some of the insights that were given in the originally movies. Particularly in terms of the copycat nature of teen suicide. It is serial killer porn for the sleeping generation. It says nothing, reflects nothing and actually is nothing.

The perfect amalgamation of the collective, wilful blindness and pat yourself on the back for not being racist or homophobic bullshit that has made people like myself turn away from the mainstream in their droves. This is a horrible book, and yet people will say nice things about it, just because it ticks all of the safe, I’m a good person boxes, that idiots stuck in the mainstream matrix hang their identities upon these days. Long-winded, boring, generic, lacking in social insight, completely humourless and with art drawn by somebody with very limited artistic abilities, this is one to avoid. Unless of course you are a fan of the warped serial killer genre that obsesses over race, sexual identities and old movies from the 1990’s. If you do, then this is the book for you. However, if you want something new and don’t feel the need to pat yourself on the back for being a nice, politically correct person then this book offers you absolutely nothing. AVOID, AVOID, AVOID.