Authors: Anthony Flacco

The Last Nightingale (33 page)

BOOK: The Last Nightingale

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For those bound by conscience, it is not deviance itself that has the power to titillate and thrill; instead, the compelling aspect of crime is that underneath the things we find undoable runs an unending series of glimpses into ourselves. The salient detail of difference being that, unlike the serial killer, we may think destructive thoughts, but we do not act them out. Provoked, we may feel rage, but the physical attack mode is not activated. We are restrained by religious faith, or by spiritual morality, by the desire for an ethical life. We hurt over the knowledge of the pain we might inflict, especially upon the innocent, and so we withdraw from thoughts that never become plans, from plans that never become action. Our own private journey to the brink of our breaking points is set in relief for us by witnessing the extremes of humanity, whether they are deduced from a crime scene by a trained profiler or manifested in the pages of crime fiction.

Isn’t there praise deserved by all who expend the energy to push the depths of their own levels of human insight? Surely we have a solid majority for the idea that it’s better to have more wisdom going around than otherwise. This remains true whether insight is employed via a recognized profiling technique, or simply through an evolving personal life—one that is composed of an ever-deeper understanding of cause and within ourselves.

So where does that leave you and me: we, who dare to love reading crime fiction in a world of interactive video games?

For one thing, it leaves us with the assurance that we cannot help but sharpen up our personal profiling skills in addition to pleasantly
passing time. The nature of a story can combine with the author’s manner of portrayal to take us on a tour through the mysteries of human nature, deeper than we ever get to go in everyday life. We know that a book has been a satisfying read when the insights employed in the story stick with us after we finish it. We enjoy a double payoff. First there is the initial pleasure of sitting with the book for the first time and following the story, becoming engrossed by the characters. Then there is the lingering pleasure of spontaneously recalling moments from the book later, when we are somehow reminded of them in daily life. Our own way of perceiving the world around us will be altered by the insights instilled in the unfolding of a good story. Our understanding of others is broadened, stretched by the characterizations that we follow throughout the book. Most of all, our understanding of ourselves is nudged open another notch or two, every time we recognize within ourselves that point in a character’s actions where we would
never
go along—or, just as instructively, where we would . . . With luck, we walk away feeling a bit smarter about the world and ourselves.

Readers of crime fiction love more than the twists and turns of a good mystery; they love to pit their individual sense of right and wrong against the driving ethics at work in the story. These readers employ the basic elements of the profiler’s skills while they match their own predictions against the plotline. Whether they are right or wrong in the outcome, the rewards to be had for sharpening up one’s personal profiling skills are there for any of us. Every time we finish a book with a net gain in our understanding of human nature, we bring another contribution to society in that our decisions are then filtered through those same profiling skills that we have so recently sharpened. Everybody gains from that, except perhaps for the victimizer types, which means that it all works out fine.

All of this leaves us with one question begging to be asked, and that question is not why we love a good mystery; rather it is why anyone who doesn’t, doesn’t. Don’t they realize that every work of
crime fiction that furthers our understanding of others and of ourselves adds to our individual power to move well through this world, through this life?

Maybe some people simply find that accumulating insight into human nature is even more painful than to just hang back and continue to endure those million tiny slaps to the head.

Now there’s a mystery for you.

SELECTED REFERENCES

Douglas, John and Mark Olshaker (1999).
The Anatomy of Motive.
New York: Scribner.

Egger, Steven A. (1998).
The Killers Among Us: Examination of Serial Murder and Its Investigation.
New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Harrison, Shirley (1993).
The Diary of Jack the Ripper: The Chilling Confessions of James Maybrick.
London: Smith Gryphon.

Holmes, Ronald M., and Stephen T. Holmes (1996).
Profiling Violent Crimes
(2nd edition). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Stout, Martha, PhD (2005).
The Sociopath Next Door.
New York: Broadway Books.

Turvey, Brent E. (1997).
CP101: An Introduction to Criminal Profiling.
Course notes. Available from: www.corpus-delicti.com. (Material cited here was found at: www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_ mind/profiling/profiling2/7.html.)

ANTHONY
FLACCO is a 1990 graduate of the American Film Institute, where he won their Paramount Studios Award for Writing. Immediately upon leaving the A.F.I., he was hired as a feature screenwriter by the Walt Disney Studios. He later published his first of several books,
A Checklist for Murder
(Dell Books), in 1995. He has since done other books, including the internationally acclaimed
Tiny Dancer,
as well as true-crime documentary screenplays. This is his first published novel.

A Ballantine Books Trade Paperback Original

B
ALLANTINE
and colophon and M
ORTALIS
and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Saint Louis University

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Flacco, Anthony.

The last nightingale : a novel of suspense / Anthony Flacco.

p. cm.

eISBN: 978-0-307-48698-1

1. Police—California—San Francisco—Fiction. 2. Orphans—Fiction.

3. Serial murderers—Fiction. 4. San Francisco Earthquake, Calif., 1906—

Fiction. I. Title.

PS3606.L33L37 2007