“The Adversary – A True Story of Monstrous Deception” by Emmanuel Carrere  (2000) – 191 pages – Translated by Linda Coverdale

 “The Adversary” has the most audacious opening sentence of any book I’ve read this year. 

“On the Saturday morning of January 9, 1993 , while Jean-Claude Romand was killing his wife and children, I was with mine in a parent-teacher meeting at the school attended by Gabriel, our eldest son.”

This is a true story.  Jean-Claude Romand actually did kill his wife and children that day in southern France near the Swiss border.  A day later he killed his father and mother. 

Jean-Claude Romand was a really nice guy.  He was a doctor who had a job as a medical researcher and director for the World Health Organization.  He had a beautiful wife Florence with two lovely little children, Antoine and Caroline.  He was well-liked and honest, someone whom his parents and other relatives could trust to invest their money.

Jean-Claude Romand was living a total lie.  He had never completed medical school, never passed his medical examination.  He drove off to work every morning in his sporty car to his big director’s job at the World Health Organization, but in fact he had no job.  He instead spent his entire work day reading in coffee shops and walking in the woods. 

Romand used all the money that people gave him for investments to pay for his house and car, his family expenses.  Later he used some of this money to buy presents for a mistress.

In the end, Romand was caught up in his lies.  People started asking for some of the money he supposedly had invested for them, and he had no money to give them.  That is when he resorted to murdering his family.  He tried to make it look like he too was severely wounded in a home break-in, but when the bodies of his parents were also discovered at their home, suspicions fell on him. 

While reading this story, I became skeptical on a couple of points.  First, would someone really go to all this trouble of getting up every workday morning and dressing up, to pretend he was a doctor and director at WHO, and then just sit in coffee shops and wander in the woods all day?   Carrere never expresses any skepticism about this, but I can’t help thinking there must have been more to Romand’s secret life.  Second, could a person who will ultimately kill his wife, children and parents come across to everyone as so calm, cool, and collected, so well-liked?   Wouldn’t such a murderer come across as more deeply troubled?

Recently a seventeen year old boy from St Louis Park, the same Minneapolis suburb where my daughter and her husband live, drove down to Iowa and robbed a couple of convenience stores for money cigarettes, and candy.  After successfully completing the robberies, he shot the woman clerks in the face, murdering them.  The women were in their early forties; one of the women had eleven children.   The police caught up with this young man.  As the police led him away, this young man had the biggest, brightest smile on his face that I had seen in a long time.   Maybe someone will write a book about him.