The Adversary: A True Story of Monstrous Deception

I got this book in the mail yesterday, and finished it today. Wow, what an amazing book. Carrere explores the moral disintegration of Jean-Claude Romand which begins when he cannot admit his failure at medical school, and culminates eighteen years later when, on the verge of being exposed as a fraud, he massacres his family. As Carrere points out, the problem with Romand's medical school exam could likely have been remedied by a talk with the dean of the medical school; instead, paralyzed by depression, he compounded his problems by a web of lies that gradually engulfed his life. He led his family and friends to believe he was a successful and famous medical researcher for the World Health Organization; in fact, he was not a doctor at all, and when he left home every morning ostensibly to go to work, he actually spent the time in cafes, bookshops, and taking long walks in the woods near the WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. This book is unusual in the way Carrere gives a very nuanced and plausible exposition of the path that led Romand from a fairly normal, introverted youth to the role of murderous killer of his family. As I reached the part of the book where Romand kills his family, Carrere has made it so plausible that I found myself nodding in agreement with his decision to do away with his children, his wife, and his parents, and their dogs. This book is very subtle; the author does not resort to any of the stilted ways of thinking that too often take the place of thought when people try to understand horrible crimes. Carrere inserts very dry observations that amused me. Noting that, during his first examinations by psychiatrists after being found to have killed his family, Romand seemed pathetically concerned with making a favorable impression on his psychiatrists, Carrere notes, "He was obviously underestimating the difficulty of giving a favorable impression when one has just murdered one's family after having deceived and defrauded one's relatives for eighteen long years." After giving this quite compassionate treatment of what led the man to kill his family, Carrere seems to catch himself at the end, and admits that he is shocked by the close friendship that has arisen between Romand and a small group of Christians who minister to inmates. These Christians natter over his comfort in prison: "He already has the blue pullover, which is warm; but it would also be good if he had the grey Polarfleece sweater." Carrere thinks that these people's tenderness toward Romand, and Romand's embrace of Christianity, and its message of forgiveness and redemption, are unseemly in light of the horrific act that Romand committed, and Carrere suggests that Romand's embrace of the message of forgiveness is just another lie that he is telling himself. I consider this book the equal of another favorite of mine, Janet Malcolm's The Crime of Sheila McGough. Carrere's book has all the depth and nuance of that book.

Jean-Cluade Romand... a man, a monster, a mystery. Romand expended an ordinate amount of energy fabricating the kind of image and existence he longed to have, but could never quite realize. From a void, he fashioned a make-believe life. Romand spent decades deceiving his friends, college classmates, his wife and children, his parents, and himself. Obviously brilliant, had Romand expended even half the energy and intellect it took for him to so artfully lie, he probably could have been the man he dreamed of being. However, crippled by depression and a mental disorder for which there is no adequate diagnosis currently available, Romand was but a ghost of a man... a lonely, empty, black hole. Was Romand sociopathic? Perhaps. But the diagnosis of sociopathy does not even begin to describe the mental and emotional vortex into which Romand descended. Every morning for more than twenty years, dressed in a business suit and pressed shirt, Romand snapped his leather briefcase closed and left his home... to do nothing. Never having graduated from college, never having held a job, having stolen every penny he ever spent, it is beyond comprehension that Romand was capable of deceiving so many for so long. Of all the potentially painful circumstances from which Romand wriggled free with unbelievable lies, his fear of exposure finally came to fruition when he realized he no longer had money or any means of obtaining money. The motive for murdering his children, his wife, and his parents was predicated upon fear... fear of the loss of the man he never was. As his house blazed with fire and smoke choked his lungs, in the end, Romand was not even successful in taking his own life. Cowardice reigned even then. This book is more than compelling True Crime. The focus of the mnauscript lies not with the Crime, but with the Truth that forever escaped Jean-Claude Romand. Writing masterfully and gracefully, Emmanuel Carrere tells an awe inspiring, tragic story of deception and loss. More bizarre than any fictional novel, THE ADVERSARY is not to be missed.

This was a thrilling read. The only negative thing I can say is that you can tell from the unconventional phrasing that the translation job was almost word-for-word. There are sentences on every page that were probably graceful in the original French but sounded a little strange in English. This might annoy you if you're picky about those things, but for me it didn't detract from the story enough to make a difference. Plus, some people might be less bothered by this than by a translator who takes too many liberties. At least, you know you're getting the real Carrere with this one.

What a story! And it's all true! A man in France....well educated...respected....a good son....a good husband....a good, loving father....wealthy....lots of friends.......and his entire persona a lie. We all know what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to decieve, but this is beyond the pale. When he THINKS he is going to be found out, he kills his ENTIRE family so that they won't be hurt by the truth! Talk about egocentricity, hubris, narcissism! This is a wonderfully researched and written book by an author with intense curiosity and lots of heart. He tells a most chilling story in a very readable way without all the gory details but with enough of them for the most avid true crime reader. Please read this book, translated from the French. It is magnificent!

This book clearly deserves more than five stars for its unvarnished look at the self-serving avoidance of psychological risk that led innocents to be fleeced and slaughtered. Truth is stranger than fiction. The actual accounts here would be rejected by any fiction editor as being unbelievable. The extraordinary ability of M. Carrere to point out the wrongs in all of their many dimensions makes this journey into madness worth taking for the reader. This is a story of such horror and depravity that many will be shaken to their roots by it. If such stories upset you or make it difficult to sleep, perhaps you should read this on happy days and in the morning. On January 9, 1993, Jean-Claude Romand, well-regarded medical researcher with the World Health Organization, killed his wife and three children. Then he had lunch with his parents and killed them. Later, he picked up his mistress and tried to kill her. The next day, he took an overdose of outdated barbituates and set his house on fire. Romand was rescued from the flames while he was unconscious, and made to stand trial. Journalist Emmanuel Carrere was moved to sort out what led to these horrors and what ensued since then. Actually, Romand was not a doctor. He did not even have a job. He spent his life pretending that things were normal and he was a model citizen, while nothing about him was as it seemed. He maintained his deception by behaving as though he was like everyone else, and persuading people to have him manage their money in a Swiss bank account. Meanwhile, he spent the money on himself, his family, and his mistress. Even the people who had gone to medical school with him and remained his friends and neighbors never realized what was going on. The deception started when he could not bring himself to take his final examination for the second year of medical school. When time came for the make-up test, he skipped that too. No one of his classmates noticed that his name was not among those who had passed, and for the next several years he was able to reenroll in medical school as a second year student and pretend to study. The elaborate fiction built from that slim base.To realize how unusual this was, his later wife was also a medical student at the same time and failed the exam that Romand skipped. As a result, she dropped out of medical school and became a pharmicist. That route would have been available to Romand as well. But he did not take it. They struck up a correspondence based on Romand's liking of the author's book, and Romand helped him to recreate the events. M. Carrere felt that Romand "was counting on me more than the psychiatrists to explain his own story to him . . . ." "This responsibility frightened me."In a time when studies have demonstrated that 80 percent of all people lie on their resumes, what is fascinating is how gullible everyone was. His wife didn't think that it was strange that she could not call him at the office. People took