A Great Review of Well-Behaved Children Seldom Make History in Gilbert!
Big thanks to Dale Ahlquist for his review of Well-Behaved Children Seldom Make History in Gilbert! Here’s an excerpt!
The amazing literary output of our own Chris Chan continues to astound us. His latest is a well-woven mystery that keeps the reader thinking about big ideas while keeping track of little details, but what he really keeps the reader doing is turning the pages…
There seems to be an insoluble problem: not the murder mystery (though it remains unsolved), but the moral dilemma of a vengeance that may seem justifiable but is never satisfactory. When the righteous becomes self-righteous, we are torn. We pity the loss of innocence, but we are distressed when it is not accompanied by wisdom or the gaining of any maturity. Chan gets us to manage a tinge of sympathy for the most unsympathetic of characters, and what’s more surprising, perhaps a dollop of disdain for the most sympathetic. He does not let us easily untie the knot of justice. We see that one of the purposes of law is to put a limit on revenge, even while we are maddened at a justice system that is less interested in justice than in preserving the system.
It's complicated.
Please consider subscribing to Gilbert and reading Well-Behaved Children Seldom Make History!
–Chris Chan
Chris Chan’s book Sherlock Poems was published on June 30th! He is also the author of the CWA Dagger Long Listed The Autistic Sleuth, written with the professional guidance of his mother Dr. Patricia Meyer Chan, and he has also written the Agatha and Anthony-nominated book on the Columbo killers, Some of My Best Friends Are Murderers! He is the author of the Funderburke and Kaiming novels Ghosting My Friend and She Ruined Our Lives and Well-Behaved Children Seldom Make History, released by Level Best Books. He is also the author of the comedic novels Sherlock’s Secretary and Nessie’s Nemesis, published by MX Publishing, as was his anthology Of Course He Pushed Him and Other Sherlock Holmes Stories Volumes 1 & 2. His Agatha-nominated book Murder Most Grotesque: The Comedic Crime Fiction of Joyce Porter was published by Level Best Books. His first non-fiction book, Sherlock & Irene: The Secret Truth Behind “A Scandal in Bohemia” is available for sale at Amazon.com and the MX Publishing website, as well as at Book Depository (with free worldwide shipping there). It is also available in a Kindleedition.
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