The Courage to Kill
By Ron Argo
4/5
()
About this ebook
The young UC graduate went to her father's beachside condo the night he was murdered, but she doesn't remember shooting him. Janice Parrish had plenty reason to hate her father after recalling memories of the horrible sexual abuse as a child some 20 years ago. But even as she's booked on murder charges, she knows there was someone else at his house that night.
So begins Janice's dark journey through a tortuous psychological wasteland of false memory and real murder.
When San Diego crime reporter Ray Myers digs up evidence of the abuse, the story becomes a media event, and at once make both him and Janice targets of a psychopath who's on a grisly pursuit of revenge.
In a race against time to save Janice as well as his family, Myers must stop the stalking psychopath whose murder spree has only begun.
A psychological mystery, The Courage to Kill is a superb portrayal of the fallacies of the malleability in the treatment for repressed memory, a controversial subject whose impact has most fixated the mental health profession since Freud.
Ron Argo
Ron Argo has been a psych-ward aide, a photographer, a Florida Keys boat captain, an award-winning newspaper reporter, a combat correspondent in LBJ's war, a plumber, carpenter, electrician, all-around jack and restorer of old houses, a would-be musician and artist who can no longer play a guitar with the arthritis. He holds three degrees to include journalism, literature and the MFA; he's gone to jail a time or two in his reckless youth but never had to post bail, been a voter in all elections, except when in Vietnam where the thought was ludicrous. He was never a bartender or preacher. Nor did he ever hold political office, if you don't count chairing a citizen's committee appointed by a board of supervisors to fight corruption over animals, and whose prize-winning newspaper series on that subject helped created the first low-cost spay and neuter clinics in a Southern California city.He has published one of the more important American war novels of the last century, an epic that one acclaimed critic/academic compared to the works of Mailer, Dos Passos, Jones and Crane.Argo's only been married twice, so he has no pressing momentum for pumping out promoting book after book, as some novelists must to do to support ex spouses, etc. He has a working, caring wife to assure his maintenance and thus survival.He is however the author of these fine, award-winning historical and thriller novels, Year of the Monkey, Baby Love, The Courage to Kill and The Sum of His Worth. Other works are in his head and perhaps going down on paper soon as he picks himself up and gets back in the game.Argo and spouse Mary--children having flown the nest--live in a small and snug community in San Diego where, like Voltaire, he's been there, learned some lessons and now tends his garden.
Read more from Ron Argo
The Sum of His Worth Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Year of the Monkey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBaby Love Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
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Reviews for The Courage to Kill
2 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5THE COURAGE TO KILL by Ron Argo starts in a terrible place and moves into the thoughts of a highly disoriented person where it stays for too long, until we tumble into a straightforward exchange between two reporters for whom I didn’t care enough. I was going to quit the story but for the voice in my ear telling me to persevere—I’d corresponded with the author on social media and he’d struck me as an intriguing man with a way of talking about the story which enticed me. Tucked into those comments was hidden a beautiful accusation of the effects of the Vietnam war on those who served, from those who stayed home and protested. The story mutates again and again, wandering effortlessly between the horrors of war, child abuse, neglect and revenge.And then everything happens so fast you can’t put the book down.What an incredible story!
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This would have been a 4 star rating if not for several grammatical and spelling errors – “There demeanor rigid, like prisoners” - and awkward bits that would have benefited from copy proofing – “She might not should have.” Verb tense shifting within single sentences was jarring – “He said hi to Richie and ask if he made pictures today”, “Max Cullen only look bored waving him over”. If this is not something that personally bothers you while reading a book, The Courage to Kill is an entertaining read.
Set in San Diego, the plot rotates around a disturbed young woman accused of murdering her father. She has no recollection of the crime. She did, however, loath her father due to recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse. An investigative reporter, Myers, covers the story and becomes caught between professional reporting and personal feelings toward the accused and events.
Recovered-memory therapy remains a controversial subject that uses unproven interviewing techniques, often by a questionably educated therapist. Argo does a good job of showing the impact of RMT in layman’s terms, without the writing being instructional. His research is strong, and it adds to the suspense of the plot. His characters are interesting and well developed. For the most part, his dialogue is strong. There are parts that feel as if he wrote them in a rush, and Argo occasionally loses his voice.
This is a typical “whodunit” that has a strong mystery component.