in a lonely place

I was hoping this thread was about the novel

so was I

The novel is great, better than the movie imo, more of a gut punch. Joy Division/New Order song great too. The demo they did just days before Curtis died is one of the most haunting things ever.

The pov is so brilliantly managed; you're immersed in this serial killer's brain to a degree that's terrifying, but at the same time you're noticing all the little details of his mistakes that of course his narcissism keeps him from seeing.

I first read it when I had moved to a new town six months before and didn't know anyone, so the immersiveness was extra creepy; I started feeling like maybe I secretly wandered the streets of Seattle by night committing horrific crimes and just didn't know it.

It's a really interesting period in crime fiction where the tables turn and we start to get the POV from the psychopath killers: the Ripley novels, Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me, Margaret Miller's Beast in View...

I don't know Beast in View, but I couldn't make it through The Killer Inside Me, and I think I tried the Ripley books and put them down for similar reasons; too much gleeful sadism for me. But here there's no glee, no voyeurism; this isn't just a monster whose eyes you're looking through for thrills, it's a human being who does monstrous things to try to fill some kind of emptiness in him, some need that feels very human even if it's been horrifically amplified and distorted.