The Ethical Assassin: A Vigilante’s Memoir
By Dr. William Ferraiolo
Reviewed by Nancy Eichhorn
I don’t typically review fiction books, however having read and reviewed several of Dr. Ferraiolo’s books, I was curious how he wove philosophy into a fictional character’s psychological well-being. The title alone—The Ethical Assassin– caught my attention: Can killing be considered ethical?
The premise:
We have a man who lost his family in a tragic car accident. He spends the next four or so years after their death narrating the events of his life via the pages of a leather-bound journal. He leaves the book on the table in a diner where he’d finished breakfast, along with cash for the meal and two tens slipped partway into the book’s pages. Supposedly, the waitress passes the book forward, and thus, it comes to be printed for all to read.
The character:
From the onset, the character’s voice reminded me of Holden Caulfield (Catcher in the Rye) albeit aided by the intellect of ancient philosophers (think Epicurus/Socrates/Heraclitus). Of course, the book’s author is Dr. William Ferraiolo, a philosophy professor at San Joaquin Delta College and author of numerous books, including You Die at the End: Meditations on Mortality and the Human Condition and A Life Worth Living: Meditations on God, Death, and Stoicism.
The content:
For 122 pages, readers listen to a nameless, family-less man slowly move into and out of his life. Over time, we learn that his wife swerved the car to miss driving over a dead animal, lost control, and inadvertently killed her son, daughter, and herself. Our narrator thus details the loss of his “ordinary life” because of their death. Sitting in a bar one night, he overhears two gentlemen talking—one boasting about his abusive power over his wife and children. Disgusted, our narrator decides this man needs to die. And he kills him, in time, with the mind of a successful murder regarding the hows and wherefores to commit the crime and not get caught. He learns that dumping a dead body isn’t all that easy, but what’s done is done. “Time will tell” becomes his repetitive refrain.
Thus, his murderous path starts . . . killing people who, in his mind, deserve to die for heinous acts. He sees flaws in other people, society, and overarching belief systems. He is obsessed with introspection to understand without coming to clear conclusions. He’s expressing and exploring as he ruminates on loss and murder, on life and death—not so much the right or wrong of it all but rather questioning deeper understandings. Like all philosophers, he explores questions about the meaning of justice, the nature of knowledge, and the purpose of human existence. He even goes so far as to quote Epicurus on the nature of death.
The takeaway
Like all of Dr. Ferraiolo’s books, The Ethical Assassin is well written. The character, the specific situations, and the context were intriguing enough to keep me reading despite feeling emotionally conflicted. I remember reading Catcher in the Rye as a freshman in high school and feeling humiliated when the teacher explained that Holden was not to be trusted, his story tainted by mental illness. Holden had drawn me into his world, and the assassin got me thinking just as easily. Overall, this book has a hook—getting readers to pause and consider what truth, justice, life, death, and so forth are and who decides. And ultimately, do I trust this narrator enough to dive into his philosophical ramblings?
