I Am Not A Serial Killer by Dan WellsMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Imagine Holden Caulfield if he lived over the family mortuary with his mortician mother, had a fascination with serial killers and slightly less angst and you would have John Wayne Cleaver. A rather apt name for a budding young serial killer at that, as the young man points out to his therapist.
Salinger’s own mental illness infused Caulfield with strong anti-social tendencies making an easy comparison between his famed protagonist and Dan Well’s in his debut, I Am Not A Serial Killer. But, this is where the comparisons end. John knows that he is not like other people and has developed a set of rules for attempting to fit in. He understands that he cannot give free reign to Mr. Monster, the name he gives for his inner demon – a moniker he borrows from the Son of Sam. Cleaver has a sense of honor and a respect for law and order even as he fights the desire to unleash his murderous hunger.
Well’s prose is clean and it sparkles like a light in your darkest nightmare as he weaves a deep and insightful characterization portraying the young man’s struggles to keep his darker nature in check and to understand the incipient traits of the psychopath within himself. The novel is not just another entry in the genre of crime fiction. It is genre busting. I AM Not A Serial Killer is strangely wonderful coming of age tale told with compassion, beauty and served with dark humor, gory descriptions of embalming and plenty of rendered corpses and missing organs.
John Wayne Cleaver’s voice is cogent and he is possessed of a self-awareness that we would not expect other 15 year olds to have and at the same time Well’s manages to make it a very believable teen aged voice. You understand that John is still a boy creating empathy for someone who could be the next monster. That is one of the remarkable things about this narrative. You care about John Wayne Cleaver. One reviewer refers to him as a teen aged sociopath with a heart of gold (Kirkus Reviews).
Indeed! When his hometown becomes the killing ground for a particularly gruesome killer John decides that the only choice he has is to discover who is responsible and put an end to the horror. Perhaps, the only disappointment comes in the form of a hint at the supernatural, which given the publishing house (TOR), should have been expected. However, the theme grows on you as watch young John attempt to answer the question as to who is the real demon, the relentless killer or the young adolescent boy who longs for human connection, but cannot feel love or empathy.
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