Revenge & Retribution in the Heartland
For me, it all started a long time ago... when I was a child, staying up till the wee hours of the night (or morning), watching some made-for-TV movie about Jack the Ripper with my mom. Decades later, I have no idea what the actual movie might have been--although it probably wasn’t a very good one--but I do know that thus began my own curiosity with the particular subset of mass murderers commonly known as serial killers. But what, we might ask, does it say about us, to have something which almost borders on an obsession with these horrible criminals? (And if your first reaction is to shake your head, rejecting outright the notion that perfectly “normal” people could be so interested in any such thing, then a brief tour of the thriller section at your local bookstore is clearly in order.) No matter whether you're fascinated by them or not, the serial killer character--someone who repeatedly goes out and murders total strangers for no comprehensible (and certainly no defensible) ...