Savage Spawn

June 28, 1999
Novelist Kellerman, a child psychologist who often uses the fictional character of Dr. Alex Delaware as his foil, here tackles the hot topic of violent children in a nonfiction format--part of the ongoing Library of Contemporary Thought series. Using the recent school shootings in Oregon, Arkansas and Colorado as a hook, he vents his own views on "childhood criminality as a social destructor." Relying on personal case histories, he provides a general profile for kiddie psychopaths. Mostly boys, from all kinds of backgrounds, these habitually violent kids are marked by their bravado and lack of conscience. In short, they're cold-blooded monsters who, when given access to guns, become deadly threats. Kellerman's personal views can be shrill, even alarmist, as he rails against such ills as "Marxist-derived social science norms," yet this novelist-on-a-soapbox diatribe plays convincingly in Gilliland's forceful reading, like an artfully constructed public speech. Based on the 1999 Ballantine paperback.