I Am Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells is the story of John Wayne Cleaver. John is a sociopath and is terrified he’s going to end up being a serial killer. He has always been fascinated by the dead bodies that enter his mom’s mortuary, fire, and serial killers. A year ago he wrote a chilling report for school about Jeffery Dahmer, a notorious American serial killer, cannibal, and necrophiliac, which gave him a therapist. The therapist diagnosed him with APD or ASPD, Antisocial Personality Disorder, which means that he is a psychopath, and therefore incapable of feeling emotion. I would like to make it clear however that even though is incapable of empathy, he understands right and wrong, and even goes so far as to have written rules for himself that help him not kill anybody. When a serial killer moves into town, first killing a local auto mechanic, gutting him, and leaving the guts in a pile for people to find, John gets very excited to study the serial killer’s methods, motives, and to do a psych profile. He realizes that doing any of these things will bring him dangerously close to breaking his rules, but when he finds someone who he thinks is the killer, he can’t help it and he follows him. The drifter, who he suspects is the killer, gets one of John’s neighbors to take him ice fishing, and when the drifter tries to kill John’s neighbor, the neighbor turns on the drifter and kills him. The neighbor turns out to be a demon. John tails his neighbor, and he continues to kill, until one night John makes an anonymous tip to the police and they dispatch two policemen to try and arrest the killer. When this goes horribly wrong, John decides that the only way to stop the demon is to kill him, and to kill a serial killer, you need to think like a serial killer, so who better to kill a serial killer, than a serial killer, or in this case a not!serial killer. John knows that he’s going to have to break all his rules to do this, but he does it anyway. He gets very close to murdering and/or stalking some people besides demon-neighbor, but eventually succeeds in killing the demon.
When I was describing this book to my mom, I used the words, which I decided I’d use here, this book is so creepy it’s awesome, and so awesome it’s creepy. I totally and completely love it. It gives a very interesting look into the mind of a sociopath (although I’m not sure if it really is an accurate description, as I’m not a sociopath, although I do have an intense love of fire, but I’m not a pyromaniac, one of the traits of the Macdonald triad, three traits 95 percent of serial killers have). It was full of dark humor, that wouldn’t really be all that funny in real life, but sound pretty funny (at least to me) on paper, case in point, this passage-
“How’s Brooke?” Mom asked, muting the TV. I kept my eyes focused on the screen.
She’s great, I thought.
She has a birthday coming up, and I found the complete guest list for her slumber party crumpled up in her family’s garbage can. She likes horses, manga, and eighties music, and she’s always just late enough for the bust that she has to run to catch up. I know her class schedule, her GPA, her social-security number, and the password to her Gmail account.
“I don’t know,” I said. “She’s fine I guess. I don’t see her all that often.”
Well’s writing style is wonderful. I kept thinking all throughout the book how certain scenes would look awesome, and great, and scary, and awesome, and did I mention awesome, in a movie. Anyway, you can tell I’m in love with this book. Thank you for reading.
Taryn.
P.S. I will be reviewing the New York Times bestseller, “Thirteen Reasons Why” by Jay Asher next.
P.P.S. I heard somewhere that this book (I Am Not a Serial Killer) would be turned into a trio, (squee!), if this information is true; I will review those books as close as possible to the release date.
