I've enjoyed this author's Hugo Marston series and picked up this recent book with anticipation. However, I didn't find it or its main character as engaging. I was often distracted from the storyline wondering why the author would choose to place such an unflattering character into a situation similar to the author's real life. I also found the constant references to the character's abnormal mental health heavy-handed. For now, I would recommend sticking with the Hugo Marston series. ( )

Review of Advance Reading Copy

British émigré Dominic works in the juvenile division of the district attorney’s office. He’s managed to work himself into a corner, so to speak, with a robbery and unplanned murder that could put him behind bars if the truth became common knowledge.

But Dominic is a sociopath and has a great deal of practice in the finer art of protecting himself. If only Bobby, the young brother of his girlfriend, hadn’t suffered the same affliction as Dominic. If only he hadn’t decided to take out a police officer. If only the aspiring-judge-prosecutor who shared his office hadn’t been quite so annoying. If only there’d been another way. But Dominic has never had a problem sacrificing others . . . .

In this sequel to “Hollow Man,” Dominic is still keeping his true self under wraps as he schemes to protect himself and to get the judgeship he desires. Dominic is an intriguing character, well-drawn and interesting. There are unexpected twists and reveals that combine to create a cunning tale of strategy and maneuvering, a gritty and dark exploration of the world as navigated by a psychopath. Readers are likely to find it a most unique experience.

Recommended. ( )

Dominic by Mark Pryor is a recommended novel featuring a psychopathic antihero.

Dominic is a charming Englishman, prosecutor in juvenile court, and musician living in Austin, Texas. He is also a psychopath who got away with murder a year ago. Dominic has known since he was in school in England that he is a psychopath. He has no natural sense of empathy, guilt, or fear, so he has studied other people to learn how to imitate appropriate responses. But he can also recognize other psychopaths, which is how he recognized that Bobby, the teenage brother of the young woman he is seeing, is also a psychopath. For his nameless girlfriend, Dominic has been trying to protect Bobby from incarceration and steer him in the right direction, but, as he well knows, psychopaths think they are too clever to get caught and aren't good at impulse control or following directions.

When Brian McNulty, Dominic's annoying fellow juvenile prosecutor, expresses interest in a judicial position that Dominic is also interested in, Dominic knows he's going to have to orchestrate a plan. Adding to the problems is Detective Megan Ledsome, an officer who is still keeping an eye on Dominic and suspects he was involved in the unsolved murder from a year ago. Dominic needs to come up with a complicated plan to keep himself safe and get what he wants.

You can easily follow the plot in this second novel featuring Dominic without having read the first novel, 2015's Hollow Man. The chapters alternate between the voices of Dominic, Brian, and Dominic's girlfriend. Dominic plans out his dark, evil scheme while maintaining his charming facade, although readers are privy to his darker thoughts.

Dominic is well-written and certainly has some surprising plot twists. It held my attention throughout. The biggest hurdle Pryor has to clear is helping readers find, if not sympathy, at least some rapport with his psychopathic antihero who lacks normal human emotions. It's kind of a hard sell that, while it has worked for other readers, didn't really work for me. I began to hope that Brian McNulty was not the schlub he seemed to be and was secretly planning his own long-con behind Dominic's back. I guess it doesn't bode well for your antihero protagonist when the reader is hoping he gets taken down.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Prometheus Books.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2017/12/dominic.html ( )

I enjoyed Mark Pryor’s “Dominic” far more than I expected.

Dominic, the title character and book’s center, is a psychopath, i.e., in clinical terms he suffers from antisocial personality disorder. In ordinary words, he’s amoral and lacks the ability to love or maintain meaningful personal relationships, is self-involved, and fails to learn from experience.

And like many psychopaths, he skillfully manipulates those around him for his own ends. Watching him do this is the core of the novel.

While that certainly doesn’t sound like the basis for a sympathetic character, it does make for an interesting one.

Dominic, an Englishman, is an assistant DA in Austin, Texas, working with juveniles. He’s also a musician, a criminal, and a major manipulator.

This is the second book in the ‘Hollow Man’ series, and the crimes that were committed in book one come back to haunt Dominic in this one. (I haven’t read the first book but had no problems following this one.) Watching him carefully set up elaborate long-range schemes to free himself from the suspicions following him sets the book in motion. Then his officemate applies for an open position on the juvenile court bench that Dominic decides he wants for himself. Getting between Dominic and whatever he wants is a sure recipe for disaster, but Pryor is careful to never make Dominic’s victims too sympathetic.

For me the major weakness in the novel is the lack of dramatic intensity. I never felt involved, but rather more a bystander. I was interested in the outcome but never emotionally involved. Rather like Dominic.

(A review copy was provided by the publisher.) ( )