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My Inner Child Wants to Kill is apparently book 2 in the Mindful Murder series by German author Karsten Dusse, with the first book having been turned into a Netflix series. I did not know any of that when I picked this one up at the library and I have no interest whatsoever in delving further into any of it. In a weird way, this book reminded me of my experience with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest — white guys writing about and complaining about how the modern world is keeping them down. In both cases, I found the writing to be fine and I was engaged enough to read to the end, but in the end I was left cold. The “heroes” are violent criminals and women are 2-dimensional punching bags. My Inner Child Wants to Kill is supposed to be humorous, and maybe that is supposed to cover up the anger and misogyny, but it fails.
The main character is a lawyer named Bjorn Diemel who has been involved in defending gangsters and who now finds himself running an organized crime syndicate. How that all happened was the subject of the first book in the series, Murder Mindfully. Bjorn is in his 40s, married but separated from Katharina and father to 3-year-old Emily. He has been in therapy with Dr. Breitner, a psychologist who has taught him about being mindful (book 1) and is now helping Bjorn get in touch with his inner child. You see, Bjorn has anger/murder issues; after the events of book 1, he and his partner in crime Sasha have decided that they don’t want to kill anymore. The death of a waiter who annoyed Bjorn weighs on his conscience and so he goes back to therapy with Beitner and learns about his inner child, who is a character of his own in this book.
Bjorn and Sasha actually own and run a preschool that little Emily attends along with a select group of other children. Sasha is the school’s director, and Bjorn is part of the parent group (a PTA like organization). Of course, he is the only dad involved, and of course the moms and one particular teacher’s aide (who is fat) come across as a bunch of silly social justice warriors. They get their comeuppance at the end of the novel. What no one knows is that Bjorn and Sasha have a gangster named Boris imprisoned in the basement. They aren’t sure what to do with him now that they have a “no-killing” rule, but somehow, someone has discovered their secret and is trying to blackmail them into killing Boris. Bjorn is also dealing with some annoying local hoodlums who disturb the peace in the park across from his apartment every night, and he is trying to figure out his relationship with Katharina who seems increasingly annoyed and distant with him. All of this stuff comes to a head during a one week period, and in order to figure out how to handle all of his problems, Bjorn discovers that he will have to work with his inner child.
The whole “inner child” thing is meant to be amusing but also insightful. It comes off more as a crutch for Bjorn to avoid responsibility and feel ok about having other people do his dirty work. In therapy he goes back into his past to figure out who hurt him (his parents) and when it happened (childhood), and this is why he feels like no one ever takes HIS feelings into consideration. Blah blah boohoo. To answer my own question, it’s less “hilarious satire” than middling white guy ranting.
