#LoveOzLit: Alex Hammond on Chandler & villains

Has anyone ever watched the show Motive? It’s a Canadian production and follows two cops’ investigation every week into various murders. The thing is, at the beginning of every episode you know who the killer and the victim are. The rest of the episode involves the investigation, but the killer’s attempts to cover up the crime or escape.

And what does this have to do with Alex Hammond’s quote? None of the killers in the show is every truly a villain. They’re the most normal people and you would never think, they could be a killer. But, slowly but surely as the case is put together the show sets out how situations escalate, how these normal people are pushed into doing the most awful of acts…  and it’s always clear that they could have chosen a different way. That, in the end, that’s what it comes down to: a choice.

I hunt serial killers is a YA series by Barry Lyga, and involves an interesting comment on choice: Jasper is a kid with a serial killer dad, one who pulled him into his murders and his stalking of his victims. Jasper is constantly afraid that he is his father, but chooses instead to bring serial killers to justice. He thinks like his father, believes he is one step away from being his father and every day is a struggle, but he makes a different choice. It illustrates the quote well, don’t you think?

Lauren, who commented below, reminded me of another book I found recently: The Devotion of Suspect X. In it, two normal people are involved in the death of an abusive husband and they seek to hide the death from the investigators. What prompts something like this? What makes  these characters go this way? They aren’t villains by a long shot. Have you read anything like this?