I read the sci-fi book Leviathan Wakes as a bit of a palate cleanse after the intensity of McTeague. Yet in the midst of this potboiler (I am using that term in the kindest possible way) was the description of the world’s many unnamed mercenaries as a man “born with a sense for raw opportunity where his soul should have been” (pg. 281 in my Orbit Books edition).
That’s a good line and a coded explanation for why we seem to have an endless supply of people willing to perform massacres, whether they be in Syria, Sudan, Sierra Leone, El Salvador, or Wounded Knee.
