Game Of Killing Barry Lyga Analysis

Austin Dixon
Mr. Lawrence
Junior English
14 November 2014
Game of Killing In the genre of young adult fiction, few writers have been more successful than Barry Lyga. Yale alumni Lyga majored in English in 1993 (Biography Barry Lyga). Currently, at the age of forty-three, Lyga continues to thrive as a young-adult novelist and storywriter (Biography Barry Lyga). Two of his novels, I Hunt Killers and Game deal with various relationships between characters. In the novels, Jazz is the son of the world’s most notorious serial killer. Although his dad was jailed, bodies continued to pile up. Jazz must work with police to prove his innocence in finding the killer he knows is responsible for his father’s escape. The novels I Hunt Killers and Game provide readers with thought provoking questions addressing relationships with main characters and how these characters are viewed.

However, sometimes these lessons and what is being encouraged is far from appropriate. Throughout I Hunt Killers, Jazz and his father Billy’s detrimental relationship is exposed as Lyga describes this relationship, “Billy Dents fathering skills – such as they were – resembled brainwashing techniques more than parenting. As a result Jazz only remembered bits and pieces, like now – a memory of blood running into a sink drain…” (Lyga 42). This reveals the extent of Jazz and his father’s contact and just how poorly Jazz was raised. Lyga goes on to state, “Thanks to dear old dad, for dear old dad, take your son to workday was year-round” (Lyga 12). Clearly, Lyga demonstrates how Jazz felt about his father’s atrocious interaction and involvement in his