My detective is tracking a serial killer. He doesn’t know that yet. Neither do the police. But a pattern will emerge. Serial killers always work in a pattern. I’m still working on figuring out this pattern. I do this by reading Whoever Fights Monsters by Robert K. Ressler who worked for the FBI and coined the term “serial killer.” Ressler was the consultant on Silence of the Lambs.
The Silence of the Lambs Book Cover
So far, here’s what I’ve got:
- likes to steal undergarments and leaves excrement at the victim’s residence.
- is obsessed with a certain type of girl: a girl who could almost be perfect but is not quite there yet. Lots of girls in LA like that.
- wants to help perfect them.
- impotent. Doesn’t have sex with them. He only leaves things inside them.
All this is subject to change. It’s a rapidly evolving constellation of ideas. The title of Ressler’s book comes from the philosopher Nietzsche: “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.”
I already feel creepy looking into the abyss. I’ll need to get over that. But does my detective see in the abyss? Or should I say: What does the abyss see in him?
‘The Murder Room: The Heirs of Sherlock Holmes Gather to Solve the World’s Most Perplexing Cold Cases’ by Michael Capuzzo is another good one for the process of tracking serial killers (and the different types the FBI was tracking.) It’s nonfiction, written by a guy who worked with a really weird profiler and a guy who reconstructs victims’ faces, but it reads like fiction. i mean, come on — a group of the world’s greatest detectives and law enforcement officers come together in a private club to solve old mysteries and catch old killers?? it creeped me out.
There’s nothing I love better than a cite! Thank you. I learn the most from reading other writing and, often, it inspires me to develop my own ideas!
Is it a procedural, or is it about mood, in the way that noir often is? Is it a twisty, we don’t know until the end whodunnit? Or we know, but it’s about the psychology of why?
Great questions. This was a problem I had to resolve a quarter way through. The answer: it started out as a traditional whodunit. But it’s morphed into a narrative about psychology–both of the detective and the serial killer. A lot in this story is about the detective’s psychology, actually, mainly because I plan to write three of these…
Do you plan to have some interplay between blog and narrative e.g. a particular discussion might potentially change the way the story unfolds? And is the Los Angeles in the novel the real city (or the naturalistic city, maybe) or just a place inside the detective’s head that serves as a convenient location?
Sometimes it seems as if LA hasn’t actually changed much the era of post-WW2 noir. I taught Dorothy B. Hughes’s novel In a Lonely Place (1947) a year or so ago — an interesting portrayal of a serial killer from a female author. I remember saying to the students after we’d read a particular section, you know, I could take you to that exact bus stop on Wilshire — it’s still there today.
Everybody’s feedback will change the course of this novel…as it’s being written even as we correspond! So, pipe in. I take all questions and suggestions seriously.
Regarding whether the LA exists in my detective’s head and whether it’s a recent LA: this LA is actually quite recent–2004–because it’s the gentrifying Downtown LA. The LA of live-work lofts and moustachioed hipsters and artwalks.
How great, Khanh! That’s such an evocative genre. Have you read A Woman in Jerusalem, by AB Yehoshua? It’s been translated into English and does a great job creating a noir-ish atmosphere, although it’s not, if I recall correctly, about a serial killer. When I read it, I could see it translated to LA so easily. The Helms Bakery would play a huge role. You might find some inspiration there. (I actually thought about trying to get the rights and do an adaptation set in LA, but never followed through.) Best of luck!
Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll totally look it up. I do like old spaces like the Helms Bakery. Right now, I’ve got an old mannequin factory in Downtown LA–creepy…
yikes. creepy indeed.
i can’t wait to see some paragraphs!
I never thought I would see the day when I would take “creepy” as a compliment. But I am flattered. I hope to post up a little taste soon!