When the Killing's Done

A Novel

By: T. C. Boyle

Narrated by: Anthony Heald

Length: 16 hrs and 11 mins

Publisher's summary

From the best-selling author of The Women comes an action-packed adventure about endangered animals and those who would protect them.

Principally set on the wild and sparsely inhabited Channel Islands off the coast of Santa Barbara, T. C. Boyle’s powerful new novel combines pulse-pounding adventure with a socially conscious, richly humane tale regarding the dominion we attempt to exert, for better or worse, over the natural world.

Alma Boyd Takesue is a National Park Service biologist who is spearheading the efforts to save the islands’ endangered native creatures from invasive species like rats and feral pigs, which, in her view, must be eliminated. Her antagonist, Dave LaJoy, is a dreadlocked local businessman who, along with his lover, the folksinger Anise Reed, is fiercely opposed to the killing of any species whatsoever and will go to any lengths to subvert the plans of Alma and her colleagues.

Their confrontation plays out in a series of escalating scenes in which these characters violently confront one another, contemplate acts of sabotage, court danger, and tempt the awesome destructive power of nature itself. Boyle deepens his story by going back in time to relate the harrowing tale of Alma’s grandmother, Beverly, who was the sole survivor of a 1946 shipwreck in the channel, as well as the tragic story of Anise’s mother, Rita, who in the late 1970s lived and worked on a sheep ranch on Santa Cruz Island.

In dramatizing this collision between protectors of the environment and animal rights activists, Boyle is, in his characteristic fashion, examining one of the essential questions of our time: Who has the right of possession of the land, the waters, the very lives of all the creatures who share this planet with us?

©2011 T. Coraghessan Boyle (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“[Boyle’s] sleek prose yields a tale that is complex, thought-provoking, and darkly funny—everything we have come to expect from him.” ( Publishers Weekly)

“Boyle’s great subject is humankind’s blundering relationship with the rest of the living world…Incisive and caustically witty, Boyle is fluent in evolutionary biology and island biogeography, cognizant of the shared emotions of all sentient beings, in awe over nature’s crushing power, and, by turns, bemused and appalled by human perversity. Boyle brings all these powers and concerns to bear as he creates magnetic characters and high suspense, culminating in a piercing vision of our needy, confused, and destructive species thrashing about in the great web of life.” ( Booklist, Starred Review)

“Alma wears the white hat, LaJoy the black, but Boyle lets neither off the hook, showing how nature will always bite back and turn even the best human endeavor to water and dust. ... Boyle makes us laugh and wonder at his dazzling gifts but his comedy is a dark business." ( Los Angeles Times)

Boyle's flawed characters shine

Boyle's picture of ambiguity and hypocrisy, potential and realized, comes through much as it did in Tortilla Curtain. Flawed characters are nothing if not believable, even when their antics push the limits of credibility. Having spent time in California reserves, I do recommend this novel for both its compelling storyline and its many insights to both the California of wine bars and wilderness. Narration was a problem when Heald tried to reflect excitement by speeding up -- hard to follow.

Really irritating

The readers voice and over dramatization was really annoying. The story was rambling, looping and so filled with pointless details, descriptions and clichés that I was pulling my hair out. One poorly executed social statement after another. A disappointment for someone deeply interested in the topic at hand.

Not a temporary obsession...

With all respect to Audible's reviewer Ms. Chouinard (above), I did not find that "Heald’s tempo and energy keep When the Killing’s Done constantly bounding forward. Boyle’s writing is so crisp and Heald’s delivery so exuberant that listening to the audiobook will be a temporary obsession." Her review mirrors Heald's breathless narration, actually.

I'd never read T.C. Boyle, but heard of this book through several interviews he gave with local NPR stations. The plot sounded intriguing, the issues are important, and fiction is a great vehicle to explain issues. Yet the characters in this story are flat (and I wanted to hear more from Alma, but didn't) and the narration irritating (albeit Mr. Heald can do accents, and definitely characterized LaJoy well). I probably disagree with what "crisp" writing means - Mr. Boyle's narrative describes settings in great detail, but without Victorian embellishment. Perhaps this is crisp?

Also, novels written in the present tense just annoy me. I suppose it's a stylistic device intended to create more suspense, placing the reader in the subject's position, not knowing what will come next, but the technique feels artificial to me - I'm reading a story, not watching a movie.

Still, a novel based on a setting that's local will get me out to explore and appreciate the Channel Islands more than I have so far. Perhaps that's what the author fundamentally wants the reader to do.

Well written, distracting reader, bleh characters

There's no doubt this book is well-written, and it is an interesting insight into the Channel Islands. The mechanics of the plot are interesting. My biggest struggle with it was that I just didn't care about the characters - the best two are a shipwrecked woman in the beginning and a cook on a sheep ranch towards the middle - but they're not the major characters and we don't spend much time with them. Both major characters - Alma and Dave - are one-dimensional and neither interesting nor sympathetic, and Dave is downright unpleasant but not in an engaging way. The reader, Anthony Heald, is not a good match for the womens' story lines since so much of their stories are physical and interior. And he is distractingly snide in an overblown way when reading Dave's storyline, which is irritating enough without the overblown tone. The best thing about this book was my visit to Santa Cruz Island to see what the fuss was about, and it is spectacular. The people in this book who are so caught up with these islands are mostly broken and don't demonstrate any growth through the book. However, the plot itself was interesting enough that I stuck it out until the end to find out what happened.