John Wayne Cleaver, a teenage boy who lives above his mom’s mortuary and doesn’t think like other boys his age. He is three years short of being diagnosed a sociopath. He takes unusual interest in serial killers* and enjoys helping his mom with embalming. He lives by a set of self-imposed rules designed to tame his darker side even though he thinks his destiny is to become a serial killer. He is the son of Sam, after all.
When a string of gruesome murders hit the town, John immediately takes interest and begins bending his rules. He worries that the killings are tempting him, and he doesn’t want to kill anyone. That’s what the rules are in the first place. Using his knowledge of serial killers, John begins to hunt the murderer – but as his investigation deepens, the lines between his two sides become blurred until he’s unsure whether he’s trying to stop the killer or protect potential victims.
Author Dan Wells did a phenomenal job capturing the internal struggle of this sympathetic sociopath while building external tension. I can appreciate a main character who doesn’t understand where people are coming from; I’ve had the same problem for years. I thought Wells did a beautiful job delving into his psychology. John is emotionally detached, and he strives to fit in, but how normal can you be if empathy doesn’t come naturally?
At first, I didn’t want the killer to be an actual demon. I preferred the metaphor, the idea that the murders were so brutal that only a demon could have done it. I like to think that Wells brought the metaphor to life – made it literal as a statement. When people can’t make sense of madness, they call it evil. By the end of the book, I thought that the demon was a clever departure from status-quo thrillers.
The bottom line is that I love this book! Though the main character is in high school, there is enough carnage that this is not a young adult book, and I like it that way. It brought me back to my “true crime phase” when I questioned how much social behavior is just acting instead of sincerity. ”I Am Not a Serial Killer” keeps the reader guessing what will become of the killer while escalating John’s psychological involvement with the case; it’s a double-whammy!
* I don’t like “obsessed” because I own a shelf of true crime books, wrote papers on serial killers throughout high school and frequented the Crime Library enough to make my mom nervous; everybody has this phase, right?
