They engage in hours of debate, pulling apart the theory of what makes someone evil. Their similar views draw them together, but their perception of themselves is mirrored back to the other, and their fascination pulls them closer still. In fact, when they first meet, it’s because Julian takes Paul’s side in a classroom debate on the ethics in science.

They’re young and misunderstood by everyone around them. Paul and Julian are both deviously smart. But as their friendship grows into more, the boundaries between affection and obsession blur, until both boys become desperate to prove the lengths they’ll each go to stay together. In one of his early classes, he meets Julian Fromme, an intriguing and charming boy who is as drawn to Paul as Paul is to Julian and the two quickly become inseparable. He’s reeling from the death of his father and trying to recover from an incident that removed him from his previous school. It’s the early 1970’s when Paul Fleischer enters Pittsburgh university. It’s a profound story that dissects and explores the intense extremes of human nature. These violent delights indeed have violent ends––only what violence awaits is part of the experience, unfolding into pure Hitchcockian tension woven throughout every page. To open these pages is to embark on a journey with two boys as different as they are similar, but who are singularly capable of twisting affection into horror. The depths of darkness come from the characters own application and exploration into the murky ethics of psychology while posing philosophical thought experiments with discomforting ends. It’s a dark novel that revolves around the pursuit of self-understanding in an academic setting, but it’s also so much more. To call These Violent Delights a dark academia novel is to simply brush the surface of the literary complexity that awaits the reader.

These violent delights micah nemerever