Publisher's Synopsis
This is the first book to examine murder through written words--primarily in the writings of the killers themselves, but also in literature, true-crime writing, and the murder dramas that are a staple of film and television. The authors--a criminologist specializing in cold cases, written evidence, and forensic science, and an anthropologist who has dealt with the signs and ciphers of organized crime and of street gangs in his previous work--are widely recognized as the pre-eminent experts in this specialty. Based on extensive research and interviews with convicted murderers, the book emphasizes the often-overlooked yet significant role that the idea of narrative plays in criminal minds. The authors explain how killers perceive their crimes as stories and why a select few are compelled to commit their stories to writing--using themselves and their victims as characters--whether before, during, or after their horrific acts. The book also analyzes the written work of the killers, using a combination of machine-based linguistic patterning and anthropological symbolic interpretation to make sense of the screeds of everyone from the Son of Sam and the Zodiac Killer to the Columbine shooters and the Unabomber. In addition, the authors examine famous literature that has dealt ingeniously with murder and its relationship with real crime, from Homer to Truman Capote. This unique approach offers a new means to penetrate the minds of murderers, revealing their motives as well as the wider social meanings of this age-old crime and our continuing fascination with it.
