Word: siegert
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Only in those moments when Siegert reflects upon his "most personal" action--choosing the victim, committing the deadly act or burying the remains--does he actually seem to take part in the decisions he makes and take responsibility for his actions. More than anyone else he reminds one of Camus' Stranger. The irony is that the Stranger was condemned because of his lack of emotion. As for Siegert, he seems immune to suspicion...
...problem in this book is that the sparse sentences, minimal descriptions and hesitant confessions which fill The Minus Man add up to virtually nothing. At the end of the book, after 200 pages and several months inside Siegert's head, the reader still remains unfamiliar with his character. We don't know him. He's barely an acquaintance...
Sure, the reader learns that Siegert's father watched him have sex and his mother was an alcoholic, that he thinks his brother was murdered and that he spent time in a mental institute. But that could have been culled from the book jacket, and the text does little more to enlighten us. The reader is left feeling that the work of paging through this novel, the time and the electricity for the light bulb, doesn...
...upon a wish to enter into the mind and life of a figure that one finds both frightening and repulsive in order to understand his motives and his methods. How does the murderer entice and entrap his victims? And, more importantly, why does he kill? McCreary fails to make Siegert intriguing to the reader or explain the killer's mysterious appeal to his prey...
...face it, most people who talk to a complete stranger, and certainly those who accept rides or drinks, do so for a reason. The person seems trustworthy and appealing. Aside from repetitive references to "the smile," (never expounded upon) and to the victims weaknesses' (which Siegert intuitively senses), McCreary gives his audience no explanation of how Siegert manages to kill with such ease. Don't we all know how to smile? And the weaknesses of a handicapped homeless man (one victim) require no telepathic powers to divine...