In my new thriller ALL GOOD DEEDS, former Child Protective Services worker turned private investigator and vigilante killer of pedophiles Lucy Kendall states very clearly that pedophiles can’t be cured. She bases her opinion on 10 years with CPS and seeing countless repeat offenders, as well as national statistics.

Lucy, as so many of our characters do, gets this very hardline belief from her creator. I don’t think they can be cured, and I really don’t believe they should have a second chance. But let me clarify, for myself and for Lucy: I’m distinguishing between pedophiles and registered sex offenders. While many registered sex offenders are pedophiles, the term and the law encompasses a wide range of acts and ages. You can read more about it here.  Lucy is after child molesters.

Which brings me to the question: should our laws be tightened to ensure a child molester never gets out? I realize that brings up the massive budgetary issues our state and federal prisons face, but how many repeat offenders are there in this country? How many kids are molested by someone who was once incarcerated for the same crime but was released because time was served? I don’t believe these people can control their urges–even the few who actually want to.

Consider the case of Joe Ed Davis, a Texas man convicted of indecency with a child for the second time. Under Jessica’s Law, Texas sentenced him to an enhanced sentence of life in prison instead of the usual two to twenty year sentence for the Second Degree Felony. Jessica’s Law was signed into effect in 2007, the result of 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford’s kidnapping, rape, and murder by John Couey. Couey was a registered offender. Jessica’s father Mark Lunsford fought for tougher sex offender laws throughout the United States. About 30 state legislatures have taken varied approaches, but the main component is a 25-year mandatory sentence and lifetime electronic monitoring.

Oklahoma is working to implement the death sentence for repeat child molesters.

But is that enough? Why do these monsters who go over children, get a second chance at all? Why must there be at least one more victim before they are permanently stopped? The answer is only simple if you look at it from an emotional standpoint, and unfortunately, lawmakers can’t do that. It’s a tangled mess that will likely never be solved. As a mother, all I know is that if someone did that to my child, I would be hard pressed to think of any law or have any sort of compassion to give someone a second chance.

And those questions led me to the creation of Lucy Kendall. She spent 10 years in our convoluted system trying to help kids and seeing the worst happen over and over again. One of her first cases involved eleven-year-old Justin Beckett, who raped and murder his neighbor and friend. Justin served his time and was released as an adult. Lucy snapped, and then started learning the benefits of cyanide. In ALL GOOD DEEDS, she’s confident she’s on the right path. But then a little girl goes missing, and she just happens to live across the street from Justin Beckett, the very man Lucy begged the courts not to release.

Loaded with guilt and a little self-righteous attitude, Lucy sets off to find the little girl herself and prove to the world she was right about Justin Beckett all along.

What do you think about repeat child molesters? Should it be one and done no matter the cost?

ALL GOOD DEEDS is available now.

Lucy Kendall lived her life in a strange mixture of carefully calculated moves and impulse decisions. Cracking the skull of the man who molested her sister and attacking her was impulse. Spending half her teenage years drinking and acting out were calculated cries for attention from her narcissistic mother followed by impulsive rages at her lack of concern.

The decade spent working in Child Protective Services before becoming a private investigator taught her two truths. One, CPS failed miserably in protecting children. Two, Lucy was more than willing to do it for them, meting out her brand of dark justice in spite of her own fear of death. But Lucy’s crusade is compromised when a self-proclaimed sociopath offers to help—and leaves her no choice but to accept it.

When eight-year old Kailey Richardson is abducted, it sets off a chain of events linked to Justin Beckett, a suspect in a life-changing case in Lucy’s past. The path she’s chosen since dealing with Beckett has been dark and terrifying—but she has no idea just how deep she will go or where the twisted road will take her.

She’s about to find out.

If you liked Dexter, you’ll love Lucy! The first book in my new thriller series will be available at all vendors on September 15th, but Kindle readers can PRE-ORDER NOW! This means the book will automatically load onto your device at 12:01 a.m. September 15th. How’s that for the early bird getting the worm?

CLICK HERE to PRE-ORDER

An excerpt from ALL GOOD DEEDS

“The Iceman.” Chris ignored the bait. “That’s your inspiration, right? The mob hit man who lost count at 200 murders. His method was easy and anonymous. He spilled the bad stuff, his mark got angry about it but didn’t do anything about the wet shirt or pants. The goods seeped through his the mark’s skin and twenty to thirty minutes later, into the bloodstream, and the Iceman was long gone. It’s brilliant, really. Great choice, for cold weather anyway, considering the health hazards. I just hope you’re more than a hit man. Woman, excuse me.”

My chest tightened into an iron cast, and my jaw ached from the hard set. If this guy knew the routine, he no doubt had proof. “Seriously, have you ever thought about seeking professional help?”

He ignored me and kept rambling. “Like I said, I’m a paramedic. And I’m observant. I saw you at a scene a few months back. You were standing to the side, in the middle of the onlookers. But something on your face gave you away–to me, at least. Guess I’m good at spotting my own kind.” He rested his chin on his hand and gazed at me with obvious admiration. To anyone else, we probably looked like we were on a first date and still stuck in the awkward getting-to-know-you stage.

“I’m not your kind.” He was nothing like me. I was just sick and tired of seeing a broken justice system routinely fail children who’ve already been treated like disposable playthings. So I did everything I could to balance the creaking scales of justice–the same scales many people want to believe are designed to protect the vulnerable in society. But those scales don’t shield anyone, even our most innocent victims. Their function is to balance the lines of bureaucracy.

Sometimes I have to fill the void.

He probably picked his victims at random and took them somewhere to torture them before finally killing them. If he was actually a serial killer.

Pre-Order ALL GOOD DEEDS

You write horror – have you always been interested in darker fiction? How did that develop?

My first idea of horror was actually movies, especially Vincent Price. I loved B movies and Japanese horror movies. Later, I watched a lot of crime documentaries and read a lot of crime fiction, which is different from horror but close. When I came to writing, I thought I’d like to try something creepy and viola, The Mountain City Bronzes was born.

When did you start writing? Was it a childhood calling, or something that came along later in life?

As a child I did a lot of drawing and writing poetry. My father kept all these little ‘books’ pages stapled together that I had given him of poetry written when I was a child. I wrote stories later, in my teens, I liked science fiction then and my English teacher said she’d never read such a good student short story. This encouraged me but I didn’t really know how to go about it, so I left it and pursued drawing and painting, until the ninties, when I took a correspondence course in writing. I was in my thirties.

I love the tagline for THE MOUNTAIN CITY BRONZES: How far will a community go to protect the safety of their children when they start to disappear? The story is a compelling, engaging read – what inspired it? 

I wrote this for a student story, when I started the writing course. My first lesson was write what you know, so I wrote something about a sculptor and a small town. I took a lot of literary license with sculpting techniques.

Kevin is in an interesting character–is he based on anyone close to you? 

Kevin represents ‘boy’ to me, just a typical boy, based on every boy I’ve ever known who worshiped his father.

Do you have a favorite horror story? One you’ve read over and over?

No favorite horror story. There are so many good ones. Of course, Poe is a favorite.

What’s the scariest thing that’s ever happened to you?

The scariest thing that happened to me was when I was about two and we went to an inn. There was a pier and my sister and I ran out on it. I fell off the end and under the pier was a giant spider. It was so huge that sometimes I think that it was only because I was so small that I thought it was so big. I had a terror of spiders for years.

Put yourself in the townspeople’s shoes–what would YOU do if your child disappeared?

I would search forever if my own child disappeared and probably become morose and even feeling guilt,y and I’d never move so the child could always find  me. My original story had the line. “It is so hard to lose a child, the searching never stops'” but my editor wanted it out. But that’s how I feel.

Let’s get personal. You live in Eastern Canada, a beautiful part of the world. How does that play into your writing? What do you do for fun?

I like the seasons in Eastern Canada, so a lot of my writing has a lot of seasonal things in it. I do like to walk and do genealogy research.

What’s your next project, and where can readers find you?

I’m working on some more dark fiction, maybe not so dark as the first. I have a bio on amazon.com and on the museituppublishing website. I also have a blog at http://madworldca.blogspot.com.  On Twitter I’m known as Madoxane, and I have a facebook and linkedin page.

Excerpt from THE MOUNTAIN CITY BRONZES:

The jail was a great refuge in June, but even in the winter, I found it pleasant to play in. There was so much fun imagining the structure when it was full, back in the gold rush. I could almost hear the walls and floors resounding to the voices of the thousands of lawless men that lived back then. In the large, empty vastness of our jail, I loved pretending I needed to find escape routes.

One day after tromping through the halls for an hour, I found a locked door.

Why is it shut tight?  What is behind that door?

Buy At MuseItUp (99 cents)

Buy At Amazon (99 cents)

Coffee Time Romance (59 cents, on sale)

Thanks so much for Madeline for stopping by. Please make sure to leave her some love!