Reviewed by Bill Sheehan

Since making his debut in 1980 with Descent of Man, the artist formerly known as T. Coraghessan Boyle (now simply T. C. Boyle) has been one of the most prolific, versatile, and consistently accomplished figures in contemporary literature. Thus far, he has published nine collections of short stories and thirteen novels covering an astonishing range of themes, subjects, and locales. His earlier works include a picaresque portrait of African explorer Mungo Park (Water Music), a probing examination of the world of the illegal immigrant (The Tortilla Curtain), and a fictionalized account of the life and work of sex researcher Alfred Kinsey (The Inner Circle). Boyle’s latest, When the Killing’s Done, is a contemporary drama set primarily in the Channel Islands off the coast of California. It is, among other things, a story of warring ecological perspectives and of the role science plays in determining the fate of various endangered species. It is also a thrilling, viscerally exciting narrative, one of Boyle’s most complex, convincingly detailed accomplishments to date.

Two very different characters with diametrically opposed viewpoints dominate the novel. The first, Alma Boyd Takesue, is a biologist employed by California’s National Park Service. Alma’s area of expertise is “restoration ecology,” which involves combating the effects of invasive species that have ravaged the closed ecosystems of the islands. As the story begins, Alma has two such restoration projects underway. One unfolds on the island of Anacapa, where the proliferation of the rat population (rattus rattus) poses a threat to the continued existence of various avian species. Alma’s solution: exterminate the rats through the use of a poisonous “control agent” called Brodifacoum. The second project takes place on Santa Cruz Island, where a chain of events threatens to wipe out the indigenous–and extremely rare–dwarf fox. The corrective measure for this situation involves bringing a cadre of professional hunters to Santa Cruz. Their assignment: eliminate the roving herds of feral pigs that have occupied the island for decades.

Opposing Alma in all of these matters is Dave LaJoy, a local businessman who has made enough money selling high-end electronics to finance a secondary career as animal rights activist. Along with his girlfriend, folksinger Anise Reed, Dave is the founder of FPA (For the Protection of Animals), a militant organization that has declared virtual war on Alma and her cohorts. Dave has come to his particular beliefs relatively late in life. He has the blind moral fervor of the convert and is driven by a fierce, often ungovernable rage. Much of the time, he feels “as if a hammer has dropped, the rush of hate and rage and frustration rushing from his gut right on up to the top of his head to inflame the roots of his hair till they ache, actually ache.”

The ongoing conflict between Dave, Alma, and their respective philosophies forms the substance of the narrative. That conflict encompasses legal battles, publicity campaigns, legitimate protests, and acts of petty vandalism that escalate, in time, to larger acts of attempted sabotage that have unexpected, ultimately tragic consequences. Boyle supplements this central storyline with a vivid series of extended flashbacks that illuminate both the recent history of the islands and the familial connections his protagonists have to that same history. These sequences add both depth and emotional resonance to the present-day sequence of events. (Only once, in his account of a tragedy aboard a pleasure craft called The Anubis, does Boyle introduce what seems to be a narrative irrelevancy that adds little or nothing to the primary tale.)

The result is an authoritative, propulsive novel founded on a series of interlocking ironies. The first is the fact that two people–an ecologist and an animal rights activist–who should be natural allies can find little or no common ground. The second is the way in which Dave LaJoy’s most idealistic aspirations are compromised–and finally corrupted–by his overriding rage. The third irony, perhaps the deepest of all, lies in Alma’s decision to preserve certain species by utterly eliminating others. As her restoration projects proceed, she will learn “what it means when you pay somebody else to pull the trigger” and will be forced to examine the certainties that have dominated her life.

Through a combination of empathy, intensive research, and sheer narrative muscle, Boyle has produced a provocative new novel that poses difficult questions while also offering an engrossing, deeply human drama. When the Killing’s Done is that rarest of creations: a literary thriller with heart, brains, and a complex moral dimension. It is T. C. Boyle at his extravagant–and always unpredictable–best.