Fear the Reaper : Synopsis

'Fear the Reaper' is a crime thriller with many elements of other Genre, including romance, tragedy, drug culture, dark humour and horror.1

Its first person perspective gives it a diary/ confessional feel to it, giving insight and familiarity to the lead character.2

It makes us question our own perception of right and wrong, as the ethics and moral beliefs of the character are brought into question and compromised by his actions and decisions.3

Richard is a schizophrenic, he meets and falls in love with a nurse at the mental hospital where he is in residence. After he is released from said hospital, he begins a new and wonderful life with Sam (the nurse). However, things take a turn for the worse as he vows not to take his medication after losing Sam to a brutal attack, where she is raped and killed, and he is left for dead. He is absolutely devastated and so begins a huge downward spiral in his mental state as he tries to come to terms with events. He sees that the medication made him weak, and soon his inner voices and demons reign a dominant rule over his life. He vows to avenge her death and so embarks on a quest of vigilantism, determined that no-one should have to go through what he has. From here we see a steady decline in his mental state as he experiments with various drugs to enhance his performance as a vigilante.4

He uses chlorophorm to capture his victims and hallucinogenic drugs and props to induce fear and vulnerability into them. He hangs them up naked from trees, comes to them dressed as the Grim Reaper and lectures them on the evil they have done, repentance and judgement. He then fakes severing their hands and genitals, leaving them in silence to contemplate the errors and evils of their lives. In their halucinogenic state, they believe everything they are seeing as the Reaper distorts their perception of reality. After the first attack, he gains an accomplace in the form of Debbie (he saves her from three men trying to rape her). She acts as bait while he chlorophorms them and judges them. 5

As the attacks continue and begin to escalate, so his mind-state steadily declines as he becomes obcessed with his quest and making the experience more unpleasent and hard-hitting to his victims. He has mixed emotions over the way his alter ego is perceived by the media (saint or madman). And opinion is clearly divided as is voiced in the form of a newsagent who loves to chat to Richie and becomes a public perception character.6

Finally he catches up with Sam’s killers, things go from bad to worse as Richie loses the last vestiges of his sanity, as he is made to face his pain in the form of the creaters of his alter-ego. What follows is an eye watering, toe curling brutal revenge, as he meticulously and manically matches punishment to crime.7

He realises that his actions are no better than his prey and gives himself over to self-judgement, and with one final bout of self-mutilation, he hangs with his victims in an halucinogenic state and contemplates his own actions.8

It is then down to the reader to decide for themselves if his actions are right or wrong and make their own judgements of his actions.