4 ideas
Máiquel, an aimless young man on São Paulo's periphery, loses a football bet, has to bleach his hair blond, and shoots Suel, the man who mocks it. Neighbors reveal Suel was a thief and treat Máiquel as a benefactor, and a local dentist repairs his teeth in exchange for a killing. Local businessmen then hire him as a paid vigilante, turning a single act of wounded pride into a profession.
What makes a killer is less the first act than how others respond to it. When a murder is met with gratitude, gifts, and status instead of punishment, the killer reinterprets himself as a protector, and that social reward, more than any innate disposition, produces the repeat killer.
Where the state fails to provide security, respectable figures like a dentist and small businessmen buy protection by paying a marginal young man to kill. They get order without dirtying their hands or reputations, while the killer carries all the legal and moral risk. The result is a private market for death, with targets chosen and prices set by those who can pay.
The first-person voice shows how a hired killer rationalizes each act as cleaning up the neighborhood, so that consumer goods, girlfriends, and social standing come to feel earned rather than bought with blood. Seen this way, vigilantism depends on the story the perpetrator tells himself and is told by his patrons, which erases his own guilt while he racks up killings.