“…They even make virtues out of ‘humility’ and ‘turning the other cheek’ and ‘loving everybody.’ Because it alleviates their guilt. It’s much nicer to pretend to yourself that your passivity makes you a saint, rather than just another gutless puke who won’t take a stand for what’s right.”

The passage above kind of encapsulates my ambivalence about the novel HUNTER: A Thriller, by Robert Bidinotto. There’s much to enjoy and appreciate in the book, and it promotes some ideas with which I strongly agree. But in my view it’s taken a little farther than I, as a Christian, can endorse. It’s not merely that I disagree with the Randian point of view on display here; I think the treatment weakens the argument (and the story) in some ways.

I usually do a synopsis of a novel’s opening chapters when I write a review, but the peculiar structure of this story makes that hard to do without spoiling the central surprise (if surprise it is). So I’ll mostly talk about the concepts underlying the story.

The central problem of this book is the early release of dangerous felons into society. Our justice system, as Bidinotto paints it (and he says all the atrocities in the story are based on true events) is that in order to take pressure off the courts and prisons, we’ve set in place a system that automatically pleas down criminal charges, and then shortens even those abbreviated prison sentences through early release for “good behavior.” This early release is facilitated by a naïve network of social service agencies staffed by do-gooders eager to let the prisoners out, proud of their “success” in rehabilitating them. But when those prisoners kill again, these do-gooders feel no responsibility.

This story centers on a group of three inmates who are being released ahead of schedule, and who proceed immediately to take revenge on their former victims, who offended them by testifying against them.

But there’s a vigilante out there, an accomplished killer who takes it on himself to protect the innocent and impose the death penalty where the justice system will not. In a conventional thriller, this character would be ambiguous. The violence he commits would begin to destroy him, and he would make some terrible mistake that would turn him into the very thing he hates.

None of that here. The vigilante is the hero of Hunter. The author’s position appears to be that our justice system is so badly broken that the only recourse left to decent society is private revenge and an eye for an eye, until reforms are made.

I see this as a weakness in the book. Not merely because I’m a Christian and believe in forgiving my enemies (a concept this book rejects with contempt), but because it makes the hero pretty one-dimensional. He’s a man without flaws, who looks into the Abyss and is not looked back into in response. In a public confrontation with “experts” on criminal rehabilitation, he has all the facts at his fingertips and reduces his opponents to impotent silence—and the news media report it as it happens, without spinning the story to make him look like a dangerous fanatic. I found that pretty unrealistic.

If I’ve given the impression that this is an anti-Christian book, I want to correct that. Although the influence of Ayn Rand is pronounced and is acknowledged by the author, one explicitly Christian character is identified as being on the side of what the author might describe as “the angels.” And he does take pains to make it clear that some of the Christian do-gooders are sincerely mistaken, and open to correction.

I should make it clear that I actually enjoyed Hunter quite a lot, and agreed with much of what I read. That I felt the message was taken to an extreme, and that some of the characters lacked depth, doesn’t alter the fact that the book moved right along and provided many satisfactions. I do recommend it (cautions for language, violence, and adult content), provided you’re prepared for the sort of thing it is.