Jerry Dampier
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Good and evil are as old as ethics or morality itself. For without an understanding of religious or philosophical ethics, the moral existence of good and evil would be impossible to comprehend; the term good, for example, would be exclusively a matter of subjective personal likes and dislikes—in other words, a mere matter of taste, differing from individual to individual with no real obligation to the public good or safety. As it currently stands in philosophy, for instance, the term good may be understood as engaging in righteous conduct; the term good may also be understood as an object that corresponds and fulfills natural needs inherent in human nature. These natural needs, for example, which are deeply, rooted in human nature, manifest themselves in our human desire for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, among other things. In these two senses, the term good is an objective universal value, based on the reality of man (by man I mean human beings everywhere, of course). From natural needs, we derive the doctrine of human rights. It logically follows that the things we have a natural human need for, we as human beings also have a natural right to. This idea is not only used in the real world that you and I live in; it is also used in the storyteller’s world of fiction or imaginary literature.
Anything working to defeat or frustrate the good in the real world or in the storyteller’s world is judged evil. This is of the utmost importance to those who believe in right and wrong. For right and wrong always follow good and evil. Society can never know what right or wrong is in the domain of social human affairs, without first knowing what is good and what is evil, and what makes it so. In Trapped Between the Extremes of Good and Evil, we enter a fictional world and explore the phenomenon of good and evil through the actions of an international serial killer, angels and demons, one twin brother’s hatred of the other, and a San Francisco detective caught in the middle of it all.
Jerry Dampier is a novelist and philosophical essayist as well as a screenwriter and song lyricist. His novels include The Pedagogy and the Boys from Beal Alley Boulevard and The Downfall and Rise of Steven Leroy Zienner. He is also the President of Books By Dampier, Inc. Visit the BBD website at www.bbd4u.com.
Born in Ohio, Jerry currently lives in San Francisco, California.
In Trapped Between the Extremes of Good and Evil, Lieutenant Detective Mark Guess, of the San Francisco Police Department, is on the most important case of his career. It is the single most important case any police detective can have. The stakes could not be any higher. Lieutenant Guess is in pursuit of a serial killer who has not only struck panic and fear in the City of San Francisco and the Bay Area, but across the nation at large; fear has also swept across other countries around the world. This serial killer is not the typical, garden-variety misfit or societal reject we’ve come to know and expect. He is, however, as close to being a portrait of absolute evil as a human being can be. He’s not gruesome, repugnant, or even vulgar; he’s a killer with distinction and class.
This international murderer is known as the 1414 Killer. After he kills his victim, he carves the numbers 1414 deep into his or her forehead. The numbers are a clue to his identity. After nearly two years of murders and dozens of victims, without having discovered so much as a single clue, law enforcement begins to doubt whether they’ll ever be able to apprehend him. But when he comes into contact with a woman of religious faith, his murdering spree appears to be at an end—at least Lieutenant Guess and law enforcement authorities think so. Unfortunately for them, however, in a series of unimaginable and unexpected twists and turns, the killer remains just outside of reach.
For the killer is aided by spiritual forces. And with demonic energies working on behalf of the killer and against the efforts of Lieutenant Guess, the job of bringing the 1414 Killer before the bar of justice becomes nearly impossible. In the midst of all that is occurring, Lieutenant Guess suffers a devastating tragedy. He finds himself engulfed in a personal crisis. And the 1414 murder case is in serious jeopardy of falling apart. However, with unexpected help from angelic spiritual forces sent to help Lieutenant Guess fight against the forces of evil, the stage is set, and the battle is joined. The earthly and spiritual battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil is truly underway. The main characters in the story are all part of a desperate game of life and death. As events unfold, we follow the mystery, suspense, and horror to its destructive climax.
“Hello, Detective Guess, Mrs. Guess; happy to make your acquaintance. Please, all of you, have a seat.”
“Hello, Professor Ginsberg. Sorry to interrupt the discussion; please go on,” replied Mark. He, Valerie, and Mr. Nickels took a seat on the sofa facing the professor, who stood alongside the fireplace.
“Please, you go right on with what you were saying, Professor,” said Valerie.
“Well, I was just telling Chief Lee and the rest of these good people here about some of the more notorious serial killers of the distant past and comparing them to some of the more recent ones. Now, you take Jack the Ripper. Although he only killed five or perhaps six people—which is almost the minimum number of people one can murder in order to be considered a serial killer—he caused a tremendous, worldwide stir. The actual definition of a serial killer is a person who murders at the minimum three or four people over an extended period of time. Serial killers stop or pause between the killings of each of their victims. If that were not the case, and they killed all of their victims all at one time or in one single event, they would be defined not as serial killers, but as mass murderers; there’s the difference.
“Now, as you may know, in the East Side of London, England, in 1888, five prostitutes were murdered by an unknown killer. The case remains unsolved to this very day. Newspapers and the general public named this vicious killer Jack the Ripper. Why? Because he cut into and ripped out some of the organs of some of his victims. These poor, defenseless women were not only murdered but mutilated in the most vicious and sadistic way imaginable; their bodies were slashed and repeatedly stabbed. Why, one woman had her windpipe cut out of her throat, another had her teeth cut out, another woman’s ears were cut off, and still another had pieces of flesh cut off her body and nailed to the wall of her apartment.
