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Paul Bernardo’s Mad World Order

It may have happened in a flash, but it took us almost five months to notice that convicted rapist-murderer Paul Bernardo had dropped a 631-page e-book, A Mad World Order, a political/espionage thriller, on Amazon. It moved to the top of the digital book barn’s Movers & Shakers list last week and was a bestseller, coming in at number three overall.

The book cost $7.77 (is it just me, or do all of these numbers sound like Illuminati shorthand?), and because it is not about his crimes (profiting from an account of one’s crimes is illegal), he made a hefty profit. Self-publishers net up to 70 per cent royalties on the site. 

The media crawled all over this information like ants on a damp sucker. Amazon customers revolted, cancelling orders and baying for blood. The comments of the appalled have since been deleted, as of November 14, as has the book. One online commenter argued Bernardo should not have been permitted to write the book. 

Amazon has yet to issue the explanation that many feel is owed. Using one of my moron personae, I wrote the company asking where that “wild bestseller is at?” and received a very polite if evasive response: “I’ve checked our records,” a customer service rep wrote, “and found that many of our customers have reported the sale of Paul Bernardo’s book. Therefore, we have removed this item from our listings.” 

I bought and tried to read the spy thriller, which is fairly well written and researched. But I detest this banal, muscle-bound genre. It is not particularly “gory” or “violent,” as has been reported, and puts forward a very current premise. 

Fanatics determined to find evidence of Bernardo’s pathology will seize on the passage about al-Qaeda warriors contemplating the receipt of “seventy-seven virgins” in heaven. Or the one where the manly hero, Mason Steale, is offered the use of a Lamborghini. “She cost [sic] four hundred thousand large,” he says (editing is not the book’s strong suit), and, “I can’t wait ’til Vanessa sees me drive up in this!”

It’s ultimately pointless to scour this Ludlumish book for clues to the author’s crimes or psyche. And the book is the poorer for that. 

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I talked to writer Stephen Reid, the notorious bank robber and former member of the Stopwatch Gang (named on account of their 90-second robberies). In 1986, he published the acclaimed Jackrabbit Parole, a somewhat autobiographical novel about a group of robbers and a big prison break, another of Reid’s personal experiences. 

He believes that the way we treat incarcerated criminals reflects on us as a culture. While many may howl, we would be far worse off if our prison system went full-metal Gitmo. Reid also asks why the book was a bestseller. The onus is on us to consider why we care what Bernardo is up to.

He concurs that Bernardo should have written about himself, that he should, in Reid’s words, have “looked into the horror.”

Bernardo has never shown remorse for his crimes, only petulance. What if he gazed inside himself authentically? “Something decent and moral may emerge, something that may restore balance to the world,” Reid says, to a world damaged by the atrocity of his crimes. 

Lawyer and activist Clayton Ruby, who was retained by Bernardo after his arrest in 1993, says Bernardo was rightly allowed to write and publish his book. This is an issue of freedom of speech, he asserts. 

Had his book been obscene or incited violence, it would be illegal. Otherwise, Ruby argues, “it is in our public interest to respect the process of rehabilitation and the humane regard of our inmates.” 

What if Bernardo had written about himself? 

Ruby believes that the prohibition against profiting from an account of one’s crimes is not constitutional, and while he doesn’t argue for the possible merit of such a book, he firmly regards its composition as Bernardo’s right. 

Would he read A Mad World Order? Absolutely not. But only because he detests all literature of this kind post-Joseph Conrad.

One genuine quandary: if prisoners, especially dangerous offenders, aren’t permitted internet access, how was the book uploaded to Amazon? How has Bernardo become fluent in current events, Arabic and Spanish speech and so geopolitically savvy?

Writer/journalist Doug Saunders looked at excerpts from the book and concluded that it seems to be “boilerplate” lifted from books and maps. (Prisoners are allowed newspapers and other reading materials.) 

He also feels that the lack of web access shows in “the ludicrously made-up Russian names that sound like they’re from Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons.” 

Reid suggests that I cherchez la femme. Last year it was reported that Bernardo was engaged to an attractive 30-something woman whose ankle is tattooed with the words “Paul’s girl.” 

Someone, perhaps this woman, uploaded the manuscript to Amazon, but in the end that doesn’t matter. Had Bernardo broken the law by writing the book, this person would have been apprehended. 

People are understandably frightened of Bernardo’s evil seeping out like a poisonous gas through his book, but one look at A Mad World Order puts that fear to rest. It’s only bad genre fiction meant to make money.

Oscar Wilde, John Henry Abbott, Eldridge Cleaver, Jean Genet and Caryl Chessman all wrote books in prison. But they wrote vividly about their crimes and punishment. Genet (who inspired John Waters to make Female Trouble) viewed his crimes as works of art and wrote such luminous prose that he excited Parisians to worship. (See Jean-Paul Sartre’s Saint Genet.) 

Was Bernardo citing the Tears for Fears song or making a sly reference to MAD magazine’s Mad World issues? Mason Steale (Bernardo’s legal name is Paul Jason Teale) is forever escaping deadly situations. He’s Bernardo writ large, like the “big, bad businessman,” the Wall Street Gordon Gekko figure he aspired to be in his youth. 

And this is deeply unfortunate news. 

After 20 years in prison, Iago-like in his silence, Bernardo finally speaks, finally performs a creative act, and it is more of the same self-aggrandizing if not self-exculpatory fantasy that fuelled his horrific early life and deadly acts. 

Amazon was well within its rights to publish the book and, having pulled it without a word, is reacting only from fear.

Toronto writer Lynn Crosbie is the author of Paul’s Case, an examination of the world of criminals Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka. Her new novel, Where Did You Sleep Last Night, is published by Anansi.

news@nowtoronto.com | @nowtoronto

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