Butcher & Blackbird

Rowan Kane is the novel’s other protagonist and first-person narrator, as well as Sloane’s love interest. Rowan, like Sloane, is a serial killer who only kills other serial killers or reprehensible people. Like Sloane, his activities raise the question of the ethics of vigilante justice: he believes he is doing the planet a favor by killing villains, rather than harming innocent people, but he, like his victims, enjoys murder. Rowan is also a chef who owns a successful restaurant in Boston and, later in the novel, opens a second successful restaurant. To the general public, Rowan seems talented, social, and charming, even though, unbeknownst to most people, he is also a serial killer. Rowan illustrates the nuances of identity because his true persona is difficult to pin down, and he plays different roles around different people.

Around Sloane, Rowan can embrace all parts of himself—the dark and violent parts as well as the charming and delightful parts. This complicates the theme of  the complexities of love in dark circumstances. Rowan faces significant challenges in forming a relationship with Sloane: He worries that she might kill him; that she might get hurt, killed, or arrested as a result of their competition; and that he might be her “destruction” even if he tries not to be; that he does not deserve or cannot have romance like a “normal” person can; and that Sloane does not see him romantically. Despite all these challenges, once both protagonists agree to take a risk with love, the rewards they reap make it all worth it. When they enter a romantic relationship, Rowan and Sloane are able to be more honest and transparent than they ever were before and enjoy the benefits of genuine acceptance, affection, and support. Their relationship helps them both reconcile the dark parts of their personas with the lovely parts because they both wholly accept each other for their true, multifaceted selves.

Lark Montague is Sloane’s best friend and, at the beginning of the novel, her only friend. Lark is kind, supportive, loyal, and a good listener who gives reasonable advice. She is a musician and a music therapist for children who habitually gives people gold star stickers to congratulate them on a wide range of accomplishments. Although Lark is not a serial killer and is not personally involved in vigilante justice, she knows everything about Sloane’s murderous activities and does not seem to disapprove, although she does point out when Sloane goes too far with torture or has other ideas that seem unsafe or unwise. This makes Lark a suitable friend for Sloane because Sloane can be completely honest with Lark without taking any risks, and receive advice that is useful to her, as someone who is not going to give up practicing murder or vigilante justice.

One of Lark’s functions as a character is to explain and provide some moral justification for Sloane’s extrajudicial killing, making Lark central to the theme of the ethics of vigilante justice. Sloane commits her first murder to prevent their art teacher from sexually abusing Lark. She justifies her subsequent murders by arguing that she is protecting other unknown people who would be harmed if her victims were allowed to continue living. Perhaps because Lark understands why Sloane killed their teacher to protect her, Lark does not object to Sloane’s subsequent murders of serial killers or people who sexually abuse children. The novel presents the fact that a “normal” person like Lark sees Sloane’s murders as justifiable as evidence that they are morally defensible.

Lachlan Kane is Rowan’s older brother. He owns a leatherworking studio in Boston and also works as a hired assassin. Lachlan is tough, smart, and humorous, and although he is skilled at killing people, he does not do it as a hobby like Rowan does and does not seem to enjoy it. Rather, he views it as a job that supplements his leatherworking income. Lachlan is also protective of his younger brothers and himself; the first person he and Rowan killed was their father because he was abusive to all three boys. Through his job as an assassin, Lachlan has access to secret information about serial killers beyond what even the FBI knows, which is how he identifies targets for Rowan and Sloane to “hunt” in their competition with each other. Lachlan acts as a donor character because, although he often makes fun of Rowan in a brotherly way, he helps the protagonists obtain whatever they need, whether it is information on serial killers, reinforcements to assist them during dangerous encounters, or clean-up crews to help them get rid of incriminating evidence.

Fionn Kane is Rowan’s younger brother. He is a doctor and lives in Nebraska. Fionn is rational, intelligent, and technical, and even though his work as a doctor seems antithetical to Rowan and Lachlan’s work as killers, Fionn still accepts and loves them as family. Like Lachlan, Fionn acts as a donor character because he helps the protagonists when they need it, namely by tending to wounds they incur while killing serial killers. Rowan’s relationship with Lachlan and Fionn is similar to Sloane’s relationship with Lark because Rowan lets his “mask” down around his brothers. He is able to be his true self around them without fear of dangerous repercussions. For people like Sloane and Rowan, who are technically criminals who could likely be imprisoned for life were their crimes to be found out, it is a rare privilege to be able to let down their masks, so characters like Lachlan, Fionn, and Lark are very important to their wellbeing.

Francis Ross, Thorsten Harris, and Harvey Mead are the targets of Sloane and Rowan’s annual competition wherein they race to discover and kill a particular serial killer whom Lachlan selects for them. These characters are some of the novel’s main villains because they kill numerous other unnamed people and also try to kill or harm the protagonists. These villains develop the nuances of identity because Lachlan simply texts Rowan and Sloane a location where a serial killer is active, without revealing the killer’s identity. Rowan and Sloane must then figure out who the killer is and race to kill him. At times, they interact with the killer without realizing he is the killer or without being aware of the specific ways in which he might harm them both, illustrating that identity cannot be reliably assessed from the outside. These villains also complicate the ethics of vigilante justice because all of them are so reprehensible that their murders are not portrayed as tragic, unfortunate, or immoral, but as acts of vengeance or even justice. Francis Ross invades the sexual privacy of guests at his inn and kills some of them; Thorsten Harris lures people to his fancy house with his charm, only to kill and eat them; and Harvey Mead hacks random innocent people up with a chainsaw while making their loved ones listen. All of these killers are evil, callous, and seem to enjoy killing for the sake of killing, which separates their actions from those of Sloane and Rowan, whose purpose is to stop villains like them.

Dr. Stephen Rostis is Sloane and Rowan’s target for the fourth year, but instead of having Lachlan choose a target, they choose him themselves. Instead of racing to see who can kill him first, they hunt and kill him together because this is less dangerous. Like the three previous targets, Rostis complicates the ethics of vigilante justice because, as someone who specializes in killing the vulnerable medical patients that he is supposed to be helping, he is portrayed as so evil that his death does not strike the reader as sad. Instead, by ending his life, it seems like Rowan and Sloane are making the Boston community safer. Rostis also helps develop the complexities of love in dark circumstances because once they establish a romantic relationship, the stakes of the competition between Sloane and Rowan become much higher. Not wanting to risk losing each other, but also not willing to give up their shared hobby of killing serial killers, the couple decides to team up instead of racing against each other to defeat subsequent villains. This significantly reduces the risk of either of them being killed, seriously injured, or arrested, although their activities are still dangerous and dark. Rowan and Sloane face the unique challenge of navigating their unconventional hobbies and “needs” within the context of a romantic relationship where they have both found something meaningful to protect and to keep living for.

At first, David Miller appears to be a non-threatening man whom Thorsten Harris lobotomized and then forced into servitude. When Sloane and Rowan first meet David in Thorsten’s house, he serves them food but does not speak, seems to have trouble comprehending communication and instructions, makes limited eye contact, and often appears like he is in a trance. After killing Thorsten, Sloane does not want to abandon David, who seems helpless, so she convinces Rowan to give him a dishwashing job at his restaurant. David illustrates the nuances of identity because he secretly has not been lobotomized, is fully verbal and mentally cognizant, and is a serial killer. Although he does not seem like it at first, David is another villain whom Sloane and Rowan must defeat, and he raises the novel’s suspense when he captures Rowan, whom he plans to kill, and reveals his plan to kill Sloane. David proves that although Sloane and Rowan are familiar with their own masks, they are not able to see through the masks others wear to conceal their true identities.

Like the other serial killer villains whom Rowan and Sloane kill, David also develops the ethics of vigilante justice. He is such a reprehensible character and poses such a serious threat to Rowan that his death at Sloane’s hands is not portrayed as tragic or even immoral. Once it is revealed that David is a serial killer who also practices cannibalism and plans to rape Sloane, David is no longer a sympathetic character and the reader is less likely to view his death as a sad event. Furthermore, when Sloane kills David, he has Rowan tied up and has already been torturing him and eating pieces of his flesh, planning to kill him soon, so Sloane’s murder of David is to protect Rowan from further harm or death. This makes it seem like Sloane’s murder of David is a reasonable or even a morally good act.