Dan Wells’ debut novel, I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER, is the first in a proposed trilogy, so the main order of business is to introduce us to the protagonist, John Wayne Cleaver. And Wells succeeds in doing this with an assuredness and deftness rarely experienced in first novels. But there is more going on here than what the first few chapters would have you assume.
Although Clayton County seems like a typical small Midwestern town, teenaged John is hardly typical — and he knows it. For one thing, he and his mom live above the local mortuary that she runs, so death and dead bodies are a regular feature in John’s life. He also harbors a fascination — an obsession, really — with serial killers, having read every book ever published on the better-known ones, and keeps a head full of facts and stories about them. He’s even made them the topic of his school projects. Needless to say, the other kids at his high school, including the one that comes closest to being his best friend, think John is a bit weird.
They don’t know the half of it. Deep down inside, John fears that he has the makings of a killer inside himself. It’s a recurring, simmering rage that he calls his Monster. To keep it at bay, John has devised a series of rules that he follows with near-religious discipline.
But then the body of local man is found murdered and horribly mangled in an alley behind a Laundromat. More similar murders are discovered, and Clayton County fears a serial killer is in their midst. John, however, has never been more excited and is determined to apply his knowledge of serial killer traits toward finding the criminal’s identity. When he follows the trail and secretly witnesses a killing, he discovers that the killer is literally not human. In fact, it is a hideous demon.
Wells’ first-person narration of John and his world is so wonderfully accurate and believable (though at times a bit reminiscent of the HBO series SIX FEET UNDER) that the addition of the supernatural horror element is a bit jarring at first. Not that we weren’t warned, but we assumed that the “real demon” John mentions in the early chapters is the same emotional Monster residing inside himself.
Once past that initial confusion, Wells is back in control again and the story becomes a pleasingly suspenseful account of John learning about the demon’s weaknesses and setting out to destroy it before it kills more of his neighbors.
The ending seems a bit too pat, but it still manages to leave us wondering what will happen next for John Wayne Cleaver and if he will continue to face more killers, supernatural or otherwise.
So, as is the tradition in such series, we’ll have to wait and see. —Alan Cranis
Related posts:
- Inside the Mind of BTK: The True Story Behind the Thirty-Year Hunt for the Notorious Wichita Serial Killer
- The Serial Killers Club
- Serial Killer Sudoku
- Face of a Killer
- Serial Vigilantes of Paperback Fiction: An Encyclopedia from Able Team to Z-Comm
