THE THIRD BEAST

by Peter Loughran ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 22, 1985

This slim novel of revenge is nasty and short and not half as compelling as it would like to be. As in Loughran's first novel, Dearest (1983), the book's narrator is unnamed. In this case, he's a London auto mechanic whose niece has been raped by four teen-age thugs. There are no eyewitnesses, the girl refuses medical examination and, consequently, the police drop the case for lack of evidence. The family presses charges and the case is dismissed in court. Afterwards, the narrator spends a great deal of time raging against the lawyers (""crooked little buggers""), the judge (""the old cow"") and the four rapists, referred to variously as ""crims,"" ""yobs,"" or ""yobbos,"" etc. Then, through blind luck, he catches one of the rapists on a deserted road at night riding a motorcycle. He runs him into a ditch and kills him. Sometime later, another rapist wanders into his shop for a carburetor and he kills that one, too. He traps a third, dispatches him as well. Of course, while these three are busy vanishing, no one suspects him of a thing. He is untouchable. When he kills a would-be burglar and burns the body with a batch of tires, he and his girlfriend make love to the ""lovely flickering romantic light"" of the smoldering corpse. There are echoes of Death Wish as well as Fowles' The Collector here, but with little of the tension or the wit of either. With few surprises, the novel winds down to its supposedly ironic ending--the narrator remains unrepentant and uncaptured and plans more murders. As he puts it, he's just trying, to ""protect [his] family."" Overall, the narrator turns out to be very nearly as repugnant as the rapists, and his constant harping on the injustices of the criminal system finally is nothing more than a nasty little whine; by the end, the book becomes nearly unreadable because of it. If the author intended this to be a trenchant comment on the vigilante mentality, then he has succeeded in a way he probably never thought of at all, promoting the very ugliness he set out to condemn.

Pub Date: Oct. 22, 1985

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Stein & Day

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1985

Categories: FICTION