Joyride, Jack Ketchum

And here it is! My favorite part of the semester. The part where I get to crack a book that’s just going to take me on a wild ride for no other reason than to just have a good time. My first semester it was Jay Anson’s Amityville Horror. Then last semester it was Robert Malfi’s Snow. This semester it’s Jack Ketchum’s Joyride.

This is not a psychological tour-de-force. It doesn’t necessarily explore the deep workings of the human psyche. It is, however, a fast-paced thrill ride that that gives a reader an easy-to-digest book that requires little commitment.

When I say commitment, I mean brainpower. Mental bandwidth. This isn’t something that needs to be dissected, merely enjoyed.

And that’s what I did. I enjoyed it.

Unlike the psychos of our past readings, Wayne Lock is painted with wide strokes and lacks many of the nuanced details found elsewhere. He simply wants to kill. He wants to kill so bad, but he just can’t bring himself to do it.

Until he witnesses a murder himself, that is. It’s like somebody who grew up wanting to be a writer, and then meeting somebody who is one… the switch goes up and now that kid’s writing up a storm in his makeshift office.

But Lock doesn’t have a makeshift office. He just has a book that he’s filled with the names of people who’ve slighted him. And once he’s sees somebody do what he’s always wanted to do, that book is going to be put to good use. Eventually.

This is the first book about a spree killer we’ve read this semester. It was a nice change of pace from the well-organized serial killers of the past few books and movies (except you, Pat Bateman) to just go on this little car ride with Lock.

And, of course, the people he witnessed commit a murder. But now they’re his witnesses! He kidnaps Lee and Carole, whom he witnessed kill her abusive husband just a couple of days before. They were his trigger, his inspiration.

Unfortunately, they aren’t the cold-blooded killers he thinks they are. They did it out of desperation because Carole’s soon-to-be-ex just wouldn’t stop intruding on their lives. Plus, he was a monster in his own right, cutting and raping Carole as if he owned her. No, they aren’t stone-cold killers, but he kidnaps them thinking they are so they could all have some fun together. That doesn’t really work out, though.

After his first kill, Wayne is thrown into a frenzy. I said before he wasn’t like our other organized killers, but he is organized. His route is planned out. He even has hotel reservations. Like a lot of spree killers, his choice of weapons is a gun, but he varies his MO a couple of times to keep the cops off his trail. It doesn’t really work, but hey, points for trying.

So what makes this guy a psycho? What traumatic event(s) in his past made him this way? Ketchum gives him the quintessential abusive parents angle, and even squeezes in an Oedipal complex for good measure. But the background felt shoe-horned, as if Lock had to have that background to be who he was. And I think that’s my major point of contention with the book: Wayne Lock could have just been a crazy sonofabitch and that would have made him scarier. Spree killers are scary like that, because everyone’s a target for no reason. So don’t give him a reason.

This book was definitely a lighter read than past entries, but I liked it. It was book candy, and it satisfied my sweet tooth.