Guest Post -Why I Love Serial Killers

By Sarah Pinborough

While Russel sets out to see if it's true what they say about cats in America, we're taking the chance to get a few different voices onto DSD. First up, please welcome Sarah Pinborough. Sarah is the author of six horror novels and her first thriller, A Matter Of Blood, was released earlier this year.

Why I love serial killers.

After writing six horror novels, I've recently crossed the line into writing crime fiction, (A Matter of Blood, Gollancz March 2010), and I've been asked quite a few times what it's like to switch genres. I often say that it's been quite refreshing, but in fact of all the genres, horror and crime feel to me like the most closely related. If they're not quite brother and sister, then they are at least first cousins.

I was reminded quite strongly of this while watching the first part of the TV adaptation 'DCI Banks: Aftermath' of Peter Robinson's work. Without giving any spoilers, the graphic opening scenes involve a machete, blood, death and the discovery of a serial killer's lair replete with bodies. Take away the involvement of a detective (perhaps the only genre separator) and it could have been the opening of a horror film.

If horror and crime are cousins, then the serial killer is their love-child. He fits so perfectly into both genres (I chose to use a serial killer in A Matter of Bood, and had also used one in a horror novel). The serial killer is the embodiment of every boogie man under the bed or monster in the closet for those who are too grown up to believe in such things. I look at films like Seven or The Silence of the Lambs and I can't decide whether they're crime thrillers or horrors. They certainly both create horror in the viewer and it might not be coincidental that they both are centred around the work of serial killers.

The serial killer is the adult's nightmare, in the way ghosts and vampires (the old-school sort anyway) should scare children. So maybe, in a lot of ways, the genre of crime is for grown-ups who like horror. Certainly more women write crime than they do horror and the whole world knows we're the more grown up of the sexes! Also, the women writing crime are writing some quite horrific stuff – I visited a friend of mine yesterday, who told me he'd been reading a Karin Slaughter novel. He paled slightly and said 'she doesn't pull any punches, does she? That is some really graphic shit.'

So if I'm honest, although I've met some really lovely new people through moving to crime, I don't feel like I've moved genres at all. It's more like I've gone to stay with relatives for a while.

-Sarah

The horror, the horror

By Russel D McLean

“The advice I got was don’t put supernatural in a crime story. It won’t work. Readers won’t buy it.”

That’s a paraphrase of a friend of mine talking about the advice he got for his first novel. Apparently supernatural and crime don’t work together. At least for readers.

I’ve thought about this a lot because the advice came from a source I respect, but the more I think about the more I think that in this case the source of wrong.

Two cases in point.

The first is the most recent. Sarah Pinborough has been hanging around the horror genre for a few years now, but her first “big” novel (at least in the UK) has just broken free. A MATTER OF BLOOD combines near future dystopia, crime fiction and, yes, the supernatural to thrilling effect. What’s particularly impressive – at least to me – is the build up to the “unnatural” events. By first combining two more “natural” genres (the near future stuff, set after an organisation called The Bank came in to save us from our monetary woes, and of course the crime fiction element which spins very naturally from her created society, being as it is set amongst coppers for “hire” and organised crime bosses) and then gently layering the supernatural elements on top until you suddenly realise they were there all along and you just weren’t paying attention, Pinborough effectively mashes genre styles to captivating effect. It’s a gamble that pays off wonderfully, and by mixing genres in this way, the story arc becomes more unpredictable, and the reader is drawn into a world with which they are unfamiliar. Putting readers off balance is a brilliant trick, and mixing genre traits – something that has become de-rigeur in the world of movies, so why is it quite so sneered upon in the world of prose? – is a perfect way to achieve that.



Of course, Pinborough isn’t the first person to mix the supernatural and crime genres to grand effect. One author who has been doing this since almost the beginning of his career is the sublimely talented John Connolly* whose latest novel, THE WHISPERERS** is one of the most chilling and artfully written thrillers I’ve read in a long time.

While I came to Connolly through an ostensibly “straight” horror novel, BAD MEN, it is his Charlie Parker series that fascinates me. EVERY DEAD THING, Connolly’s debut was, on the surface, a very well written serial killer novel set in the US. Charlie Parker’s family were killed by a stranger who called himself The Travelling Man, so our protagonist sets out across the country for revenge on this serial killer. By the end of the novel, however, something happened that made us question the nature of its events. We were left with the uneasy feeling that The Travelling Man may have been part of deeper, more unexplained events. This feeling again occurred in DARK HOLLOW, the second Parker novel and by the time of THE KILLING KIND, we were sure that all was not as it seemed in the world of Charlie Parker.

But the stroke of genius on the part of Connolly, was that, until THE LOVERS, we were never sure what was going on, how much was in the damaged head of Charlie Parker and how much was real. There were hints here and there, but the interpretation was left to the reader, and there were ways in which you could read events to suit either interpretation.

I won’t tell you which way he jumped. But it is a beautiful surprise, and changes the nature of the series in a way Connolly has followed up masterfully in THE WHISPERERS.





So this week’s reading advice (if you hadn’t figured already)?

Pinborough and Connolly.

Go on, you won’t be disappointed.


*Disclaimer, blah-blah, yes I know JC has said very very nice things about my debut, THE GOOD SON, but I was a fan of his for many years before he even knew my name never mind said such ego-swelling things.

**An early edition fell into me lap thanks to the wonderful folks at Hodder & Stoughton