J.D. Barker’s trio of novels featuring the Four Monkey Killer were legendary stories about a ruthlessly diabolical killer who always seemed to stay one step ahead of those pursuing him. Now, Barker revisits Anson Bishop, aka the 4MK, in THE FIRST SCARLET DOOR, the opening installment of a new prequel trilogy.

Whenever we read about the most notorious killers, there is always the question of whether they got there as the product of their own environment or if they were born that way. Imagine we had the opportunity to find out the answer. Just think about how differently we might look at Hannibal Lecter if we understood the backstory that created a man who killed and ate many of his own patients. 

"THE FIRST SCARLET DOOR is J.D. Barker at his most real and brutal. His depictions of the darker side of humanity who preyed on young people like Anson lends much to understanding why he turned out the way he did."

This is the tactic that Barker has taken with Anson Bishop, who is 15 years old in 1999. Even though he already has learned to kill, his reasons and methods might surprise you and even cause you to sympathize with him just a bit.

At the start of the book, Anson and his friends, Vincent and Paul, all of whom came from the same corrupt and abusive foster home, had killed a man guilty of many awful deeds. They were done to the young people of Charleston, and what made his transgressions even worse was that he was a police officer. In fact, dozens of lost children were being preyed upon by corrupt adults who should have been their beacons of protection. Anson has seen many of his buddies simply disappear, never knowing the dark fate they might have met. 

The boys meet up with a girl they know who leads them to an ominous-looking door that may hold some answers to the mystery surrounding their missing friends. Doors are a heavy metaphor used throughout the story, with the scarlet door of the title reserved for Anson himself at the end of the novel. The Genovese crime family is behind much of the criminal activity in the area, including running international trafficking rings that have preyed specifically on girls in the vicinity.

The book also presents two sidebar stories about other lost youths who end up in the wrong place and pay the ultimate price. One of them is Amanda, who is beaten by a truck driver and robbed of her last dime. That is not even the worst horror as she ends up in the clutches of a black-market organ trader who removes every vital organ from her body, ending with her heart. Her corpse is left in an abandoned car as an empty shell of the young woman who dreamed of going to Hollywood and becoming Judy Garland.

THE FIRST SCARLET DOOR is J.D. Barker at his most real and brutal. His depictions of the darker side of humanity who preyed on young people like Anson lends much to understanding why he turned out the way he did. While it might not make readers forget about the horrifying murders he committed as the 4MK, it makes a really good case for accepting that he was a product of his nightmarish environment. I am eager to see what comes next after Anson walks through that scarlet door.