First published back in May of 2023, British author Jonathan Butcher’s novel ‘What Good Men Do’ formed the sequel to the author’s exceptionally disturbing and brutally evocative novella ‘What Good Girls Do’ (2017).
DLS Synopsis:
Seventeen-year-old Elizabeth Crisp is safe. Or at least that’s what she’d been told. She’s no longer a captive. No longer a sex slave. Elizabeth had escaped. Gotten away from her abusers. Survived a hell far beyond the comprehension of most people.
Elizabeth was now under the care of the authorities. Having been born into a life of captivity and never-ending abuse, she now needed very specialist help. The emergency care she’d been receiving since her escape wasn’t set up for Elizabeth’s needs. Accordingly, she would be transferred to an alternative facility. Somewhere where she could get the help and specialist support she needed.
However, Elizabeth’s movements are being closely monitored by others. It was more than just her father behind her captivity and abuse. Two men in particular were responsible for coercing her father into setting up the cell and instigating Elizabeth’s continuous abuse. Two men who both held roles in the police force. Two men who were known within certain dark circles as Finch and Strickland.
Those two men, along with a few others, were still in contact. Finch ran a secure website known as ‘Funland’. A site where Finch streamed the abuse they enacted for the enjoyment of the site’s handpicked subscribers. However, now that Elizabeth was gone, they were missing their principal source for this sadistic sexual cruelty. They were missing Funland’s star.
Elizabeth’s father might be dead, but these men who’d abused her were still at large and they were keen to see the tables turned, back into their favour. For Finch, seeing Elizabeth get away from them wasn’t something he took lightly. The fact she was no longer under their cruel control hurt him deeply. The situation had to be corrected. They had to get Elizabeth back, if it’s the last thing they do. And then they’d make the bitch pay. But they’d need help. Someone who could do what others couldn’t. That help would come in the form of Rexem.
Rexem ran an invite-only web forum. On his highly secure website, Rexem presented his online congregation with streamed and recorded videos, which he referred to as his sermons. Acts of unimaginable cruelty to crush the life from the unblemished, before these innocents wilted from inevitable corruption. He was breaking the beauty of purity down to the perfection of nothingness. Reducing flesh, blood, and soul to just an empty void. Destroying the life from these innocent, pure bodies with implements of torture, with fire and stone and the callous actions of one acting beyond conscience. For in his head, Rexem was a god.
With Elizabeth’s impending transfer came the perfect opportunity for these men to get her back. To orchestrate the audacious and unthinkable. But their plans are even more ambitious than that. They also want the young mother who was pulled into the madness of Eliabeth’s escape. They want Serenity and her baby daughter too.
The men have a plan. They have a secluded destination perfect for what they have in store for their playthings. All they need now is the girls that thought they’d gotten away from them. And then Funland would put on the final show of all shows.
With Rexem’s assistance, these bitches were going to learn exactly what good men do…
Douse me in bleach and cut out my fucking eyeballs. Holy shit is this novel, this sequel to the incredible ‘What Good Girls Do’ (2017), one brutal-as-they-fucking-come slab of extreme horror.
This shit’s fucking insane. It’s like reading a fucked-up blend of ‘A Serbian Film’ (2010), ‘I Spit On Your Grave’ (1978), ‘8mm’ (1999), Mike Duke’s ‘Ashley’s Tale’ Trilogy (2015 – 2018) and Ketchum’s ‘The Girl Next Door’ (1989) all rolled up into one hard-to-swallow malignant treat. Oh, so you’re familiar with these collective titles?! If that’s the case, then finish off the job and get the fuck onto this novel to completely drown your soul in a vat of despicable human corruption.
But in all seriousness, this novel is hardwired messed-up extremity at its darkest. Taking us through this nihilistic journey is a revolving perspective which jumps between a handful of key characters. Of course, one if Elizabeth, lending us a first person POV of the hell these vile men will once again subject her to. Let’s double that inner-view of the abuse with another first-person-perspective, delivered through the eyes of Serenity, who’s once again dragged into this sadistic hell, this time with one of her infant children in her arms.
Alongside these, we’re also given the perspective of Rexem. This my despicable friends, is where things get even more fucked up. This guy is some nasty shit. He literally sees himself as a god, torturing to death young, innocent children and teenagers in the most hideous and brutal ways imaginable – all to achieve some sort of empty, nihilistic zen. This shit is dark.
Finally, we have Chad. Oh, Chad, a character that adds numerous layers and complexity to the whole setup. He’s the teenaged son of Finch who was forced to rape Elizabeth back when she was a captive in her cell. Thing is, despite his deep-rooted regret, at the time he fucking liked it. And he’s cum over the abuse his father et al have enacted on multiple occasions since. But with Chad we have complexities. Conflicting emotions and a quagmire of mashed-up morality, designed by the evil engineer of this whole depraved set up – Jonathan Butcher.
Indeed, as Butcher explains in the tale “exploration isn’t a binary “yes” or “no”, but an endless, awful spectrum”. Now that’s one bastard of a beautiful but insanely terrifying quote.
If I was to summarise this sequel in a short statement, it’d be that it takes the depraved, harrowing, can’t-sleep-since-I-read-it brutality of the first book, and shoots a dirty syringe full of dreadful-heaven into its veins. In essence, this sequel is a pumped up, undeniably more ambitious and potentially more involved exploration of the depths plummeted in the first book.
There are not many books that have left me feeling so internally violated, so corrupted and mentally-sodomized as this book did. At times during reading it, I found myself pausing purely to take a breath, to look around where I was just to feel the comfort of my setting, so I could purposefully extract myself for a second, from the abyss of depravity Butcher had pulled me into.
There is no reason why anyone in their right fucking mind would want to subject themselves to this nihilistic depravity. But for some reason, some of us do. What the hell does that say about us?!
Butcher, you’ve got yourself a second perfect score. Now go choke on those ten DLS skulls to repent for the stain you’ve put onto this world.
Yooouuu’rrrre wellllcommmme.
The novel runs for a total of 305 pages.
© DLS Reviews
‘Elizabeth’ instalments:
- ‘What Good Girls Do’ (2017)
- ‘What Good Men Do’ (2023)
