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A Novel
by Marcus Sakey
Book Reviewed by:This article relates to The Blade Itself
Marcus Sakey was born in Flint, Michigan and graduated from the
University of Michigan. He is married
and lives in Chicago where he has recently completed his second novel, At the City's Edge (Jan 2008). To prepare for
The Blade Itself he shadowed
homicide detectives, learned to pick a
deadbolt in sixty seconds, and drank
plenty of Jameson.
Sakey was motivated to write a book
after inviting author J.A. Konrath out
for a beer following a speech Konrath
gave at Columbia College, which Sakey
attended for a short time. When they
staggered out of the bar five hours
later one particular comment of
Konrath's was seared into Sakey's brain:
"You could stay in school, and in a year
you’ll have an MFA. Or you could leave
and have a manuscript." Put that way,
Sakey says the choice was easy!
"If
there’s a platform to The
Blade Itself, it’s the
impact of prison and the flaws
in our system of incarceration.
America imprisons more people
than any other nation, close to
two million inmates. Many states
spend more money on jails than
schools. Seventy percent of
inmates are illiterate. 200,000
are mentally ill. Amnesty
International has actually
condemned the American prison
system.
And worst of all, prison is
punitive. Because of the
swelling population and
shrinking budgets, there is
almost no effort towards
rehabilitation. There aren't
programs to teach job skills, or
even life skills. When they are
released, inmates haven't
learned anything except how to
survive in prison.
Imagine spending seven years in
maximum security. Learning to
survive in a world built to hide
the most dangerous of men.
And it got me wondering, what
would that do to someone?"
- Marcus Sakey.
This "beyond the book article" relates to The Blade Itself. It originally ran in January 2007 and has been updated for the
November 2007 paperback edition.
Go to magazine.
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