I am Not a Serial Killer, Dan Wells, 2010

The setup is a lot like Dexter: The protagonist works with dead bodies (embalming them), is fascinated by them, and also fascinated by killing. He uses his evil nature for good, ridding his town of a real (supernatural) serial killer, while fighting his own demons. He has a set of rules to follow to stop himself from killing.[page_break]

A lot of the Amazon reviews called IANASK a teen book, because the protagonist is a teenager. This is stupid. (Most of the Amazon reviews were stupid, in a variety of ways. No one there seems to have understood why the book works.) The problems the story deals with are not everyman alienated-teen-growing-up issues. The story reminded me a little bit of Dorp Dead, a strange magical-realist young-adult gothic horror novel that scarred me when I was very young, that is an alienated-teen book. IANASK has that vibe of creepy, desperate isolation, but it’s much bleaker. The protagonist is an alienated teen, but not one that the typical alienated teen should relate to. There is no hope at the end that he will outgrow or overcome his problems.

IANASK is in first-person, and Dexter (the TV show; I’ve never read the book) has voice-over narration. Both these stories have first-person narration, because a key part of the story is that someone just watching the protagonist’s actions would impute the wrong motives to him. So they show, but also tell.

It’s better-executed than Dexter in a few ways. Dexter is supposed to be a psychopath, but TV has watered that down enough for him to come across as a nice, caring guy you can empathize with. He’s a normal guy who had a traumatic childhood experience that twisted him. Which is wrong. There are different plausible theories about what makes someone a psychopath, but that isn’t one of them.

John, the 15-year-old protagonist of IANASK, is a creature that would never be allowed to be the star of a TV show, because he is modelled more on real psychopaths, and is much more disturbing than Dexter. You can’t empathize with John because he explicitly doesn’t have the right feelings to empathize with. He knows fear, and longing, and fascination. But he can’t love. He is less than human. He can’t be redeemed by therapy or pills or the magic of friendship. Wells has some idea what is going on inside John’s head, and it is more consistent than the mishmash of caring and psychopathy we see in Dexter.

Fire changes it from one thing to another, drawing off its energy and turning it into . . . well, into more fire. Fire doesn't create anything new, it simply is. If other things must be destroyed in order for fire to exist, that's all right with fire. As far as fire is concerned, that's what those things are there for in the first place.

In my biology class, we'd talked about the definition of life: to be classified as a living creature, a thing needs to eat, breathe, reproduce, and grow. Dogs do, rocks don't; trees do, plastic doesn't. Fire, by that definition, is vibrantly alive. It ears everything from wood to flesh, excreting the waste as ash, and it breathes air just like a human, taking in oxygen and emitting carbon. Fire grows, and as it spreads, it creates new fires that spread out and make new fires that spread out and make new fires of their own. Fire drinks gasoline and excretes cinders, it fights for territory, it loves and hates. Sometimes when I watch people trudging through their daily routines, I think that fire is more alive than we are— brighter, hotter, more sure of itself and where it wants to go. Fire doesn't settle; fire doesn't tolerate; fire doesn't “get by.” Fire does.

But you can sympathize with John. He would like to be a real boy. He knows something is missing inside him, that he isn’t a real person and can never fit in. His attempts to reach out to people always go wrong.

“I have rules to keep me normal,” I said. “To keep me . . . safe. To keep everyone safe. One of them is that I have to hang out with you because you help me stay normal, and I haven't been doing that. Serial killers don't have friends, and they don't have partners, they're just alone. So if I'm with you I'm safe, and I'm not going to do anything. Don't you get it?”

Max’s face grew clouded. I'd known him long enough to learn his moods—what he did when he was happy, what he did when he was mad. Right now he was squinting, and kind of frowning, and that meant he was sad. It caught me by surprise, and I stared back in shock.

“Is that why you came here?” he asked.

I nodded, desperate for some kind of connection. I felt like I was drowning.

“And that's why we've been friends for three years,” he said. “Because you force yourself, because you think it makes you normal.”

See who I am. Please.

“Well, congratulations, John,” he said. “You're normal. You're the big freakin' king of normal, with your stupid rules, and your fake friends. Is anything you do real?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I. . .” Right there, with him staring at me, I couldn't think of a thing.

“If you're just pretending to be my friend, then you don't actually need me at all,” he said, standing up. “You can do that all by yourself. I'll see you around.”

“Come on, Max.”

“Get out of here,” he said.

I didn't move.

“Get out!” he shouted.

“You don't know what you're doing,” I said, “I need to—”

“Don't you dare blame me for you being a freak!” he shouted. “Nothing you do is my fault! Now get of my house!”

I stood up and grabbed my coat.

“Put it on outside,” said Max, throwing open the door. "Dangit, John, everyone in school hates me. Now I don't even have my freak friend anymore." I walked out into the cold and he slammed the door behind me.

“How'd you like to live with a Mom who thinks you're a robot? Or a gargoyle? You think you can just say anything you want and it will bounce right off? 'John's a psycho! Stab him in the face—he can't feel anything!' You think I can't feel? I feel everything, Mom, every stab, every shout, every whisper behind my back, and I am ready to stab you all right back, if that's what it takes to get through to you!” I slammed my hand down on the counter, found another bowl, and hurled it at the wall. I picked up a spoon and threw it at the fridge, then picked up a kitchen knife and prepared to throw it as well, but suddenly I noticed that Mom was rigid, her face pale and her eyes wide.

She was afraid. Not just afraid—she was afraid of me. She was terrified of me.

I felt a thrill shoot through me—a bolt of lightning, a rush of wind. I was on fire. I was floored by the power of it, of pure, unfiltered emotion.

This was it. This was what I had never felt before—an emotional connection to another human being. I'd tried kindness, I'd tried love, I'd tried friendship. I'd tried talking and sharing and watching, and nothing had ever worked until now. Until fear. I felt her fear in every inch of my body like an electric hum, and I was alive for the first time. I needed more right then or the craving would eat me alive.

I raised the knife. She flinched and stepped back. I felt her fear again, stronger now, in perfect sync with my body. It was a jolt of pure life—not just fear, but control. I waved the knife, and the color drained from her face. I stepped forward and she shrank back. We were connected. I was guiding her movements like a dance. I knew in that instant that this is what love must be like—two minds in tandem, two bodies in harmony, two souls in absolute unity. I yearned to step again, to dictate her reaction. I wanted to find Brooke and ignite this same blazing fear in her. I wanted to feel this shining, glorious unity.

        (John’s relationship with his mom, BTW, stuck out as artificial. According to the narrator and his sister, his mom is almost too awful to live with, and has driven his sister away with her cruelty. But in the story she’s a perfect mother. John keeps complaining about how awful she is, and she seems to think she’s an awful mother, and yet we never see a hint of anything less than wonderful about her. Intentional? Maybe, but if so, it harms the story by making John even less sympathetic, and doesn’t fit with John’s rigorous introspection into his own situation.)

        Spoilers ahead:

John may still be a little too sympathetic for reality. John does care. It’s only second-order caring; he cares that he doesn’t care. I don’t know if real serial killers do. That’s the novel’s only big flaw: It waffles on the question of what John really feels. He doesn’t care about other people, yet he wants to be a good person, and in the climactic scene, temporarily acquires nobility and humanness because he admires the self-sacrifice of another character. I just don’t know if that works. It’s a bit of a cheat, or at best a mystery.

A lot of the Amazon reviewers complained about the novel’s supernatural aspect as being unnecessary. But it isn’t. The novel’s pathos comes from John realizing, as he stalks Mr. Crowley, the demon in his town, that although the demon isn’t technically human, he’s still a lot more human than John is.

“On what wings dare he aspire?” said a voice. I spun around and saw Mr. Crowley, sitting a few feet behind me in a camp chair, staring deeply into the fire. Everyone else had left, and I'd been too absorbed in the fire to notice.

Mr. Crowley seemed distant and preoccupied; he was not talking to me, as I assumed at first, but to himself. Or maybe to the fire. Never shifting his gaze, he spoke again. “What the hand dare seize the fire?”

“What?” I asked.

“What?” he said, as if shaken from a dream. “Oh, John, you're still here. It was nothing, just a poem.”

“Never heard it,” I said, turning back to the fire. It was smaller now, still strong, but no longer raging. I should have been terrified, alone in the night with a demon—I thought immediately that he must have found me out somehow, must have known that I knew his secrets and left him the note. But it was obvious that his mind was somewhere else—something had obviously disturbed him to put him into such a melancholy frame of mind. He was thinking about the note, perhaps, but he was not thinking about me.

More than that, his thoughts were absorbed in the fire, drawn to it and soaked into it like water in a sponge. Watching the way he watched the fire, I knew that he loved it like I did. That's why he spoke—not because he suspected me, but because we were both connected to the fire, and so, in a way, to each other.

“You've never heard it?” he asked. “What do they teach you in school these days? That's William Blake!” I shrugged, and after a moment he spoke again. “I memorized it once.” He drifted into reverie again. " Tiger, Tiger, burning bright, in the forests of the night, what immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?'“

”It sounds kind of familiar,“ I said. I never paid much attention in English, but I figured I'd remember a poem about fire.

”The poet is asking the tiger who made him, and how,“ said Crowley, his chin buried deep under his collar. ” 'What the hammer? What the chain? In what furnace was thy brain?'“ Only his eyes were visible, black pits reflecting the dancing fire. ”He wrote two poems like that, you know—'The Lamb' and The Tiger.' One was made of sweetness and love, and one was forged from terror and death.“ Crowley looked at me, his eyes dark and heavy. ”'When the stars threw down their spears and watered heaven with their tears—did he smile, his work to see? Did he who made the lamb make thee?'“

The fire rustled and cracked. Our shadows danced on the wall of the house behind us. Mr. Crowley turned back to the fire.

”I'd like to think the same one made them both,“ he said, ”I'd like to think it.“

The trees beyond the fire glowed white, and the trees beyond those were lost in blackness.

Mr. Crowley had arrived, with Kay alongside, and they were talking to someone just ten feet away. He was crying, just like Brooke—just like everybody but me. Heroes in stories got to fight hideous demons with eyes red as burning coals; my demon's eyes were only red from tears. I cursed him then, not because his tears were fake, but because they were real. I cursed him for showing me, with every tear and every smile and every sincere emotion he had, that I was the real freak. He was a demon who killed on a whim, who left my only friend's dad lying in pieces on a frozen road, and he still fit in better than I did. He was unnatural and horrible, but he belonged here, and I did not. I was so far away from the rest of the world that there was a demon between us when I tried to look back.

        John studies Crowley but can’t figure him out until a talk with John’s therapist. John couldn’t understand Crowley’s actions because they were based in love. And this love, which connects Crowley to humanity in a way John never can be connected, is the weakness John will use to kill him.

        The novel’s tension comes partly from Crowley’s killing spree, and his and John’s mutual attempts to kill each other, but also from John’s struggle against his own desires. Like Dexter, he has a set of rules to follow. But he finds that in order to save his town from Crowley, he has to begin breaking his rules. To save his town from a monster, he must become a monster himself--and he may never be able to go back afterwards.

        If you’re worried about gore, there isn’t much. The murders aren’t gory. The goriest scene is at the very beginning, where he and his mother embalm a corpse. I read it while I was having surgery--a very poor choice of book to bring with me--and I still got through it.

        I’m impressed with this novel. The emotional structure is well-thought out. Yet it didn’t affect me as strongly as many other novels, because the main character is, deliberately, not someone I can relate to. His problems are abstract to me. I can feel something for him, but feel almost foolish for doing so. It’s like feeling sorry for a cat, while knowing the cat would never feel sorry for you. The story comes across to me almost as a philosophical problem: Supposing such people exist, what can we do with them? And supposing human relationships are such a strange, illogical thing, what does that say about us? But I like philosophical problems, and it’s rare to find a novel that spins one out as an adventure yarn rather than as a sermon.