An Absolute Gentleman

by R.M. Kinder

Book Overview

A spine-chilling first novel loosely based on the author's real-life relationship with a convicted murderer, An Absolute Gentleman delves, with subtlety and tremendous psychological insight, into a serial killer's mind.

Meet Arthur Bloom: charming guy, small-town English professor, struggling writer, and occasional murderer. In this beautifully articulated debut novel, R. M. Kinder brilliantly channels Arthur's voice to reveal the aberrant...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1582433887
• ISBN13: 9781582433882
• Release Date: October 2007
• Publisher: Catapult
• Length: 294 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.6" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

surprisingly unexpected

This book was a complete surprise, a small town very likeble professor has a hidden past and also a hidden agenda. He once in a while is a murderer. He is a serial killer one who nobody around notices anything wrong. What I think is most disturbing in this novel is the calmness with which everything happens. It has left me haunted thinking that anyone among us can be this man. I wish I would find more books like this one.

A rare, startling book

Last night I was up until 2:30am on a worknight reading this exceptional novel. It's one hell of a story, mega-creepy and the writing is exquisite and perfectly formed. A rare, startling book. You'll be recommending it to your friends if not pushing it into their hands. It's a novel for book lovers in many ways: set on a mid-western campus; the protagonist is a creative-writing professor; the heroine is a literature professor. A novel for literature lovers; for those who appreciate an academic setting; for those who want to unravel a mystery; for all those who want to read a good book. Here you are! There are so many quotable lines but this one, maybe, is my favorite: "The natural world is no place for any creature, but there's no place else to go." Be good to your readerly heart -- read this novel just as soon as you can.

From J. Kaye's Book Blog

Arthur Blume, published author, teaches creative writing in Mason, Missouri. He's been convicted of murdering one of his students. The public has painted him and his mother monsters. In his memoir, he intends to rectify this misconception. Arthur narrates his life, not in sequential order, but by alternating between his Missouri present and his Georgian past. As I read about his life, I found myself forgetting this was a work of fiction. It felt so unbelievably real. R. M. Kinder, a masterful story weaver, gives readers penetrating insight into a serial killer's psyche. Throughout the book, I wondered if this is how neighbors and church members saw Dennis Rader, the BTK killer. From there, I wondered how well I know my own neighbors. "An Absolute Gentleman" by R. M. Kinder is first novel that is loosely based on the author's real-life relationship with a convicted murderer. As I read the last few paragraphs of the book, goose bumps formed on my arms. What a chilling ending! This book is without a doubt, one of the best thrillers I've read this year. It's Oh-My-God good! J. Kaye http://j-kaye-book-blog.blogspot.com/

"I intended no one any harm."

R. M. Kinder explains in her afterword why she wrote "An Absolute Gentleman," a novel about a serial killer who is "well read, with old-world charm, intelligence, a good education, and nice outward form." It seems that an acquaintance of hers named Robert Weeks was just such an individual. She wanted to tell the story of an ordinary person who is actually a monster "to help explain the human condition, the paradox between the good neighbor and his evil acts." "I was just an aging, bald man, willing to get along with everyone," says the narrator, Arthur J. Blume. Paradoxically, he "can care about someone and then kill them." In a series of flashbacks, Kinder fills in the back story that describes how the banal and courtly Blume became so twisted. His psychotic single mother, Mary, brought him up in a Georgia farmhouse during the 1940s. Mary's occasional moments of lucidity were offset by her frequent delusions. Fortunately, she had enough money from an inheritance to support herself and her son, although she relied on her good-hearted neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Sutton, to frequently step in and lend a hand. Mary had been abused as a child and she continues the pattern with Arthur. Although she does not strike him, she shuts him up in a closet (with a supply of food) for days on end and "touches" him inappropriately. By the age of ten, the neglected boy has been forced to become self-sufficient, having learned to cook, clean, and sew out of necessity. Arthur realizes early on that he cannot rely on his erratic mother for sustenance and support. The chapters about the protagonist's early life alternate with those that take place in Missouri in the 1990s. At the age of fifty, Arthur moves to Mason, where he has been offered a job teaching creative writing to college students. He has published one novel, but so far, there are no takers for his second book, "Ghosts." As he settles into his position, he makes some new acquaintances, including the eccentric Nada, a seventy-three year old perpetual student and aspiring writer, Grace, an attractive professor who appears to have designs on him, and Margaret, the formidable and nasty English department secretary. This is one of the most chilling books of the year, mostly because Arthur takes great pains to hide his underlying nature. He is polite and solicitous and gives no indication that he is capable of sudden and inexplicable acts of violence. The reader gets little hints along the way that Arthur wears a mask behind which he cleverly conceals the ugliness and rot festering in his psyche. For example, he loves to cite examples from nature documentaries about animals that do monstrous things to their young. He concludes one of these passages by saying, "The natural world is no place for any creature but there's no place else to go." Kinder also clues us in to Arthur's mental illness by describing the ways in which, as a child, he tortured and killed small animals. The author's understated and vivid w

The BEST PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER I have read in years

I cannot believe that this is a first novel! R. M. Kinder has crafted a unique serial killer in a psychological thriller that is just as good as the work of Patricia Highsmith and Ruth Rendell. A college writing instructor, Arthur Blume is dedicated to his students, scrupulous about his work, elegant, well-spoken, intellectual, and often caring. A nice person, really, except for those pesky black holes in his character that lead to infrequent, random urges to murder. Raised by a mad, cruel mother, Arthur is a sad case, but his students, colleagues, and lovers don't catch on until a body is found in the snow. Ms. Kinder has written this novel with artfulness and a light touch. By telling the story in the voice of the absolute gentleman, in the style of Humbert Humbert in Nabokov's Lolita, she spares the reader the grisly details. To create suspense without shock requires a deft touch indeed. At the conclusion of the book, the author states that in writing An Absolute Gentleman, she drew from an experience she had with a real-life serial killer. I didn't realize this while I was reading it. I loved this book. To me, it had no wrong notes. I found the story compelling and the characters intriguing, and I was sorry to finish it. I hope that the book gains a great following, and I hope that R. M. Kinder is inspired to try her hand at this genre again and again.