What do our most notorious killers deserve?

This is the question M. J. Arlidge explores in this fast paced, violent tale that imagines what might happen if a vigilante infiltrated the probation service and decided to supply the bereaved families with the knowledge required to take their revenge…

What’s it about?

Arlidge’s chunky tale focuses on a handful of fictional criminals who, upon release from prison, have been granted a new identity and lifelong anonymity due to the ferocious public disgust their crimes have inspired.

There’s ‘Emily’, a loving single mum, ‘Jack’, a young man starting a new job, and ‘Russell’, who has a new girlfriend, and all of them are about to find that their cover stories can’t protect them from the fury of their victim’s next of kin…

Can Probation Officer Olivia Campbell protect her charge? And is he worth protecting? Meanwhile, can anyone stop the tsunami of revenge? And is this really what justice looks like?

What’s it like?

Brutal. Horrifying. Challenging. As Arlidge’s short chapters dance between multiple narrators we find ourselves uncomfortably close to the perturbed and perturbing thoughts of a paedophile, a rapist, a bereaved father and a furious young woman, among others.

I liked the use of multiple point of view and didn’t find it hard to keep track of the multiple characters, though I might have had more trouble had I ‘read’ this as an audiobook, since individual chapters are not named for their characters.

I appreciated the moral dilemmas presented here: what can be considered ‘justice’ for the most appalling crimes? Can the most disturbed offenders really live morally worthwhile or even morally indifferent lives as citizens under the lax control of the probation service?

Final thoughts

Ultimately, ‘Eye for an Eye’ contains a dizzying barrage of violence that must surely encourage any discerning reader to begin to question the essential difference between the ‘criminals’ and the ‘vigilantes’. And yet, the parolees are not uniformly ‘nice’ people. For me, the most powerful scenes underlined how and why certain offenders were pushed towards old habits and crimes; one character, in particular, is peculiarly vulnerable – while also clearly presenting unacceptable risks to those around them.

I thought this did serve a dual purpose effectively: it was a genuinely tense crime thriller with a cracking pace and a perfect ending and it was also almost a nuanced take on the subject matter – in the end, Arlidge implies, only love can redeem those whom society deems irredeemable. I would also suggest, we need far more probation officers to help support and monitor parolees so that reintegration has genuine potential to succeed.

‘Eye for an Eye’,
M. J. Arlidge,
2023, Orion, hardback