Bad Kids begins in a peculiar way: at the very beginning, Zijin Chen introduces us to three brief and seemingly unrelated scenes – the murder of the elderly in-laws, the theft of the university teacher’s phone and the wrongful accusations of the best student in the class.
You will find out that this student is Zhou Chaoyang. Soon he is visited by his old acquaintance, Ding Hao, who escaped from the Beijing orphanage together with a friend nicknamed Pupu. Since Chaoyang’s mother is rarely at home, the young fugitives decide to stay with him for a while, at least until they come up with a further plan of action. During this time, they enjoy their free time and go to the park, where they accidentally record the moment of the aforementioned murder. Pupu and Ding Hao come up with an idea to sell the camera to the murderer and make a living with the money. And this is where the whole absurd action of the novel starts – and which then ends with nine victims.
It’s difficult to talk about Bad Kids without spoilers, but I haven’t read such an absorbing novel for a long time. I still had to put down from time to time to digest all its difficult themes, because how often do you read about calculating children who wrap an adult murderer around their little finger? After finishing, I couldn’t help but admire how the whole twisted plot came together, what was the role of the individual characters and how incredible the ending of the novel was. The next day I entered Tajfuny and said: “you all must read this” – let it also be a message to you that it is really worth getting on this literary rollercoaster.
