Talking With Psychopaths and Savages
2019
- sociology
- true crime
- nonfiction
- crime
- psychology
The story
The leading writer and criminologist directs his uncompromising gaze on a growing phenomenon - so-called 'rampage killers', whose random multiple killings invariably leave entire communities in shock and mourning. A natural subject for the UK's bestselling true-crime a study of people who randomly kill large numbers of others (spree killers), or who set out to do so in specific places or situations (mass killers). Because of the ease of obtaining firearms in the USA, many of these, inevitably, are American, but there have been other recent examples in New Zealand and Norway, while three major mass shootings took place in the UK at Hungerford in 1987 (17 dead, including the killer), Dunblane in 1996 (18, including the killer), and in Cumbria in 2010 (13, including the killer). As such killings become more frequent, it is easy to blame them on the ready availability of firearms and weak or non-existent background checks, even though many countries, including the UK, have extremely robust firearms legislation. What is more difficult to establish, however, is the motivation behind such some are occasioned by grievance, real or imagined, while others have their origins in a sense of failure or feelings of inadequacy. Other killers, however, seem to be driven by a desire for power over their fellow humans, often coupled with an overriding contempt for the lives of others. In search of answers to the questions raised, Christopher Berry-Dee offers case studies in some of the most infamous mass killings of the past fifty years, from school massacres to workplace killings, hate crimes to familicides. In doing so he demonstrates, chillingly, that such murders are almost impossible to predict, and therefore almost impossible to prevent.
What it’s like
Clipped, unsentimental prose with a cold, investigative register, like a case file that has been turned into a book. Each chapter opens on a specific atrocity and then steps back to ask what drove it, moving between police records, interview transcripts and the bewildered accounts of survivors and neighbours. The sensory world is bleak and mundane: quiet suburban streets, school corridors, factory floors, and the stunned hush that settles over a town afterwards. Nothing is lingered on for spectacle, but the violence is described plainly and in enough detail to land, including gunfire, deaths, and the aftermath, so expect gore-adjacent content and real distress. The mood is grave and unsettling rather than gruesome, with a steady undercurrent of dread as the author returns again and again to the same conclusion: these killings are almost impossible to foresee. Reading it works best in a quiet, focused stretch, not as late-night background. It suits readers of true crime and criminology who want analysis of motive over lurid detail, and anyone trying to understand how grievance, failure and a craving for power can converge into mass violence.
More books like Talking With Psychopaths and Savages
Closest in mood, pacing and theme. Tell us why you loved Talking With Psychopaths and Savagesand we’ll explain which ones fit you.
