I have a confession to make: I can’t watch horror films. As an author of dark and violent novels, you would have thought I would devour them but no. They scare the crap out of me.
But what I do love are serial killer books. I save them for the downtime. For the gaps in between writing when my life is taken up with the minutiae of life I’ve forgotten about while I’ve been buried, trying to hit a deadline. I store novels like a squirrel hoarding nuts for winter, waiting for the time when it’s safe to catch up on what I’ve missed; when I’m sure I’m not going to subconsciously feed a plot line into my current work in progress.
Why the difference? Who knows. Maybe, when I read, I enjoy the safety of being able to put a book down, while a film comes at you, zombies and murderers leaping out of the screen. And a book has the space to explore where a screenplay, with just dialogue, might not be able to, to dig into their deepest, darkest thoughts. To really take a look at what’s going on.
Anyone who has read The Echo Man or my latest, The Twenty, will know I am fascinated by the bleaker side of humanity. By the people who kill and maim and torture and – most importantly – why. My favourite fiction explores this psychology. Either from the victim’s perspective, the killers’, or those left behind.
A wonderful example of this is Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka. Following three women affected by serial killer Ansel Packer, in the hours before he’s scheduled to die on death row, it shines a light on the history of the tragedy and the lives of those left in his wake. Of Lavender, Ansel’s mother; Saffy, the detective on his trail; and Hazel, twin sister to his wife, who can only watch helplessly as events unfold. It’s poignant, tense and beautifully written as it digs deep into the life of violent men like Ansel.
Another character-focused novel is Real Easy, by Marie Rutoski. We are transported to the Lovely Lady strip club, and the women that dance there as a killer preys in their midst. Rutoski’s prose is gritty and real, with one of the most heart-breaking chapter endings I have had the privilege of reading as Detective Holly Meylin numbly staggers through life, trying to track down the killer.
So, let’s talk about the detectives. The broken, beaten and damaged, who gather the evidence in a serial killer’s wake. While the detective-with-a-past is a well-worn course, it’s popular for a reason – a well-adjusted copper just doesn’t hold the same thrall.
My favourite of these has to be DI Jack Caffrey from Mo Hayder’s novels, beginning with Birdman as Caffrey investigates ritualistically murdered women in Greenwich, Southeast London. And Caffrey has a past – a brother that disappeared when they were boys, taken by a killer living behind his very own childhood home. Hayder’s writing is unflinching, blood-curdling and pitch-black dark, no more so than in The Treatment, the second book in the series. She pulls no punches, embracing a dingy, disturbing path that most crime writers, including myself, fear to tread.
The serial killers themselves are a source of great fascination. While researching The Echo Man I read over two dozen biographies and accounts of true crime, searching for the psyche behind the murderer.
And on this subject, no list would be complete without a mention of Hannibal Lector and The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris. Published in 1988, it is still the gold standard of serial killer novels as the cunning Lector is pitted against innocent FBI agent Clarice Starling. The dangerous but devious killer behind bars is another trope authors can’t resist, one I explore myself in The Twenty in the form of Elijah Cole, and done to great effect by Nadine Matheson in The Jigsaw Man.
I’m a big fan of Matheson’s books, wholeheartedly embracing The Jigsaw Man and its follow up, The Binding Room. This series follows DI Anjelica Henley and the Serial Crimes Unit as they investigate murders in a gritty East London. Matheson’s background as a criminal lawyer really comes to the fore in her attention to detail and it’s this, plus the wonderful characterisation, that immerses us in the story so fully that Henley and the team come to feel like friends.
The reverse of this fond characterisation has to be one of the first serial killer books I ever read – American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. I discovered it while I was at university and was so terrified I didn’t go out for a week. Bloody, bone-chilling and brutal, Patrick Bateman is the narcissistic killer of the age, focused only on ego and rivalry. With a twist that subverts all expectations I adored it – but haven’t mustered the courage to read it again since.
These books have all influenced my writing, one way or another. I have my own disturbed detectives – in the shape of DS Nate Griffin in The Echo Man and DCI Adam Bishop in The Twenty – who I absolutely adore putting through the wringer. I prefer not to sanitise the nastiness and violence of serial killers, and have embraced the darkness, while hopefully applying the detailed psychology and character-driven plots I have enjoyed in the novels mentioned here.
But I am always on the lookout for the new and the gripping as well as trying to push myself further as a writer. I’d love to write the novel that turns the genre on its head, that attracts a new crowd of fans to the serial killer thriller. Maybe I’ve achieved that with The Twenty. Maybe not. But in the meantime, do let me know what you’ve enjoyed. And I hope you find a new favourite here.
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