#Fictional serial killer images series#

#Fictional serial killer images series#

Lector who has really sold us on the idea of a murderer who is just so much cleverer than anyone else in the room, and if youвЂ™re a fan of the TV series Hannibal, one who dresses impeccably well, too. First appearing in 1981вЂ™s Red Dragon, the doctor is in many ways the grandfather of fictional serial killers, undoubtedly giving birth to hordes of murderers after the huge success of The Silence of the Lambs.

You could hardly have a list like this without talking about Thomas Harris and his iconic cast of serial killers, and, specifically of course, Dr Hannibal Lector. Because it reminds us that terrible things lurk in dark corners, yes, but also that they can be beaten. Why? For the usual reasons we enjoy horror and crime-because itвЂ™s satisfying to see the monster defeated. As I grew older, this side of serial murder became interesting to me too, and itвЂ™s certainly something I kept an eye on when writing my own books, but I still do enjoy reading about the extravagant serial murderers of fiction. They arenвЂ™t Machiavellian geniuses with a love of opera, or agents of darkness powered by an otherworldly evil they are just terrible men- and sometimes women-who destroy because itвЂ™s the only way they feel anything at all. Most of the time they are simply grim and damaged men with a need to feel power over others. The reality of serial killers, of course, is usually somewhat more mundane. Vampires and werewolves and xenomorphs with acid for blood were all fine, I guess, but serial killers were another level up in the horror stakes because they were actually real.

Freddy Krueger, after all, was killed by his neighbours because he was himself a serial child killer, and Michael Myers was, aside from being an unkillable creep, a fairly straight forward serial murderer. I loved horror movies too, even though half the time I was much too scared to actually watch them, and I would especially crave those that seemed to have one foot in the real world. Despite being what my family charitably termed вЂњa sensitive kid,вЂќ I was very much drawn towards horror and dark things, and IвЂ™ve never grown out of that. Whether pilfering my cousinвЂ™s true crime magazines or trying to sneak out of the library those non-fiction books with a section of grisly black and white photos in the centre, I was compelled to find out more about them. Like a lot of people (or a lot of writers, anyway) IвЂ™ve been fascinated by serial killers since I was a child.