South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
‘Notes on an Execution’ delves into lives of women in serial killer’s orbit
In her second novel, literary agent and author Danya Kukafka distills the serial killer subgenre — always a metaphor for the breakdown of society and justice — into a masterful look at a murderer’s origins and the women affected by these crimes.
“Notes on an Execution” expertly delves into the choices — good, bad, disastrous, successful — made by the various characters. Kukafka is wisely more interested in character studies than in violence.
“Notes on an Execution” opens with charming, handsome, lethal
Ansel Packer on death row in Texas, waiting to be executed in 12 hours for the wide swath of murders he committed across the country. Ansel is not worried. He believes he’s bewitched a female guard who will help him escape. It’s worked on other women; this guard will be another victim. The various short chapters about Ansel are told in second person as if the pronoun
“you” allows him to talk directly to the reader.
Through a variety of past and present timelines, Kukafka introduces the women whose lives have circled around Ansel, beginning with his mother, Lavender, who gives birth to him when she is 17. Her relationship with Ansel’s father quickly soured even before the baby was born. Choices, she muses, are “how we resent them, and how we regret them — even as we watch them grow.”
She manages to escape, abandoning 4-year-old Ansel and his 2-monthold, unnamed brother while arranging for foster care to find the children. It’s the only way she can save the boys, and herself, from their cruel, abusive father. Even then, Ansel showed tendencies toward violence.
“Notes on an Execution” introduces Saffron “Saffy” Singh, who, as a child, landed in foster care with Ansel and who saw a vicious streak in him.
She grows up to become a tenacious New York State police investigator who was determined to prove that Ansel was a killer. Readers meet Jenny Fisk, who marries him, ignoring the advice and concern of her twin sister, Hazel.
Kukafka makes it clear she has much empathy for the women affected by Ansel’s destructive nature but has little sympathy for the choices he made in the memorable “Notes on an Execution.”