Bio
I’m Ryan, a freelance writer, living and working in Ottawa, Canada, who graduated with a BA in English from Trent University in 2002. I enjoy writing fiction, running, and going on long nature walks with my two daughters. I previously published, Events Quarterly, an online magazine which showcased short stories, poetry, articles, interviews, and digital art work from writers and artists around the world. Some of the more notable interviews included Tiffany Thiessen (Saved by the Bell), Steve Alten (NY Times Best Selling Author), and Brad Roberts (Crash Test Dummies).
I’ve worked on social media campaigns, email marketing, and many web sites and online campaigns.
Trigger Warning
Have you ever made the easy decision, rather than the right decision, and it ended up ruining your life over and over again? I sure have, but my guilty past is nothing compared to Alan Davies, a 16-year-old who starts out as a naive boy and spirals downward into an out of control man in Colin Knight’s Some People Deserve to Die.
After vaping weed and listening to rap music in the suburbs of Ottawa Canada, I thought, yeah, I’m bad; I can totally relate to Alan Davies, to this book. Alan quickly proved me wrong. In all official definitions I’ve ever read, Alan is clearly the protagonist of this book, but he is the ultimate antihero.
I think of antiheroes as characters like Walter White, and Alan is like a very young Walter White, unlike myself, a mere Jesse Pinkman. Alan Davies is innocent, until something horrible is thrust upon him. He allows bad things into his life and continues to make bad decisions over and over again because it’s easier in the moment.
Despite Alan’s antihero status, he has moments, however brutally murderous and misguided, where he tries to do the right thing. After the first chapter, I was hooked. I read this book, and Alan’s status as an innocent kid who gets taken advantage of, pulled me in as the reader. Even though Alan makes, sometimes, horrific decisions, I kept following him, kept wanting to know more.
Some People Deserve to Die is a fast paced novel, with unexpected twists and turns, that never let me down. Alan travels to different cities and countries, and he does many different jobs. Having been to many of these places myself, I can say with confidence that the author, Colin Knight, gives an extraordinarily accurate account of locations, jobs, and people, even though he had license to stray at will, under the banner of fiction.
Colin Knight has a way of delivering details in this book that wasn’t boring. With every novel I have read, I have that “reread moment.” The moment where I think to myself, what the hell was I just reading? I’m too busy thinking about what I’m going to have for dinner tonight, or if I met Julia Louis-Dreyfus would I have a chance with her? I don’t care what my friends, wife, or children think. I don’t even care that she’s more than 15 years older than I am. She is damn sexy. With Some People Deserve to Die, I rarely found my mind wander. This action packed book, needs to be a movie, so someone please make it soon so I can watch it.
A professor I had, like a thousand years ago, in university, gave me a bad mark on a review I did because it was both positive and negative. Despite my resentment over his marking, I thought he was wrong then, and I still do. I think a good review should give everything that’s good and bad about a book. The only thing that really made me raise an eyebrow when reading this book was when one of Alan’s antagonists, Brett, was described as “muscle laden” at 6’4″ and 200lbs. I am a leggy 6’2″ at 195lbs, and I’m lean and muscular. The size description of Brett didn’t match up well with his weight.
The ending was brilliant, and completely true to Alan’s character. Colin Knight could have gone in a different direction with the ending, and some readers might have preferred that, but the ending he chose was the most likely ending for his character.
Now, I’m going to go watch Seinfeld because Elaine, damn sexy!
If you want to get a copy, you can check out Some People Deserve To Die on Amazon or wherever you choose to get your books. If you’ve already read it, I would love to hear what you thought about it in the comment section below.