truepenny | Review: Masters, Killing for Company

Killing for Company: The Story of a Man Addicted to Murder by Brian Masters

I don't think the comparisons with In Cold Blood are justified (mostly because In Cold Blood is so much its own thing that it's hard to compare anything to it usefully), but this is a very good book about how and why one particular serial killer became what he was (he died last year).

Nilsen would be tragic if he hadn't killed fifteen young men: intelligent, ambitious, driven by his staunch union beliefs, living alone except for his faithful mongrel bitch Bleep, unable to form connections with other (living) people. But then there are the murders and his macabre near worship of the corpses ... and the utterly grotesquely utilitarian methods by which he disposed of the bodies.

Masters is a very calm dispassionate narrator, always looking past what Nilsen--who was extremely articulate--said about what he did to the reasons underneath. He does an excellent job of showing where the crevasse in Nilsen's psyche was, even if he can't quite explain it any more than Nilsen or any of the defense or prosecution psychiatrists can.

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