Least Favourite Plot Device Employed By Way Too Many Books You Actually Enjoyed Otherwise I read a lot of thrillers and mysteries and there are several plot devices that are quite common. There is just one that I find slightly… Read More ›
Serial killer
Reverend Mr Beecher quoted in ‘Fiend: The Shocking True Story of America’s Youngest Serial Killer’ by Harold Schechter
“A child dying, dies but once; but the mother dies a hundred times.” ~ Reverend Mr Beecher quoted in ‘Fiend: The Shocking True Story of America’s Youngest Serial Killer’ by Harold Schechter
Harold Schechter in ‘Fiend: The Shocking True Story of America’s Youngest Serial Killer’
“…there is some abiding human need to imagine the past as a paradise – a golden age of innocence from which we have been tragically expelled. But a dispassionate look at the historical facts suggests there are few, if any,… Read More ›
Harold Schechter in ‘Fiend: The Shocking True Story of America’s Youngest Serial Killer’
“Affronted by the nonstop barrage of media violence, we pine for a return to a more civilized time – conveniently forgetting that a hundred years ago, public hangings were a popular form of family entertainment, and that turn-of-the-century ‘penny papers’… Read More ›
Harold Schechter in ‘Fiend: The Shocking True Story of America’s Youngest Serial Killer’
‘Living at a time of pervasive pollution, we yearn for those delightful pre-automotive days when the air was free of car exhaust – forgetting that the streets of every major nineteenth-century city reeked of horse piss, manure, and the decomposing… Read More ›
Harold Schechter in ‘Fiend: The Shocking True Story of America’s Youngest Serial Killer’
“The longing for a bygone age – for a time when life was slower, sweeter, simpler – is such a basic human impulse that it often blinds us to the fact that the ‘good old days’ were a lot worse… Read More ›
Fiend: The Shocking True Story of America’s Youngest Serial Killer by Harold Schecter
Opening Sentence:Dressed in the street clothes they had given him – a shabby grey suit, it’s baggy pants supported by galluses; a rumpled white shirt, its collar too small to button; an old silk tie that dangled halfway down his… Read More ›
Never to be Released by Paul B. Kidd
Opening Sentence:This is a book about violent crime. Synopsis:’Never to be released‘. A rare recommendation reserved for the most vicious of killers. The mass murderers. The serial killers. The child murderers. Those who rape and kill in gangs. Killers like:… Read More ›
Black House by Stephen King & Peter Straub
Black House is written with the flair and style typical of Stephen King, with a slightly different narrative style that I assume is the result of Straub’s influence.
The Missing by Chris Mooney
Surprises around every corner, and a great storyline.
Rafferty's Rules is Closing Down 