Review: Great villain
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 12, 2013
John Harrison's book is a wonderful study in the dark world of a serial killer.  In fact, it's the bad guys in Indoctrination who get all the attention and rightly so, because they make the cops look downright boring in comparison.The book starts off with a cop named Dallas who has to be talked out of taking his gun out of his mouth because a serial killer named The Father has control over his mind.  That's about as exciting as Dallas gets, and for the rest of the book, it's The Father and his new protégée who run with the story.  I won't say any more to keep the suspense of the story going, which does right up until the very end.The author uses a pen name, I'm assuming because of his work.  I don't imagine the patients of a psychiatrist want to imagine themselves in one of his books of fiction.  As a writer, John Harrison really knows how to give the reader a scare with his serial killers.  Harrison shows how and why a serial killer can be made through abuse along with a helping of love and support from the wrong person.What disappointed me about the novel was that I didn't learn what started the cop down a road where someone could influence him to such a degree that he'd kill himself on command.  There were hints about a childhood incident between 'the Father' and Dallas, but I wasn't rewarded with the reason.  Maybe this is going to be a series and I'll have to read the next book to learn the secret.Regardless, this is a fascinating and fast moving book that's hard to put down.  The criminals are the superstars of the book to the point of eclipsing the good guys.