''Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters'' (2004) is a

non-fiction Nonfiction, or non-fiction, is any document or media content that attempts, in good faith, to provide information (and sometimes opinions) grounded only in facts and real life, rather than in imagination. Nonfiction is often associated with be ...

true crime

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...

Peter Vronsky Peter Vronsky is a Canadian author, filmmaker and investigative historian. He holds a PhD in criminal justice history and espionage in international relations from the University of Toronto. He is the author of the bestseller true crime histori ...

, a criminal justice historian. It surveys the history of serial homicide, its culture, psychopathology, and investigation from the

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to the early 2000s. The book describes the rise of serial murder from its first early recorded instances in

ancient Rome In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 B ...

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the Post-classical, post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with t ...

and

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, and

Victorian Britain In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardia ...

, and its rise and escalation in the United States and elsewhere in the world, in the

postmodern Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of moderni ...

era. The book also surveys a range of theoretical approaches to serial killers interspersed with dozens of detailed case studies of both notorious and lesser known serial murderers, illustrating the theory in practice. Considered by some a definitive history of serial homicide, this was the book serial killer

Dennis Rader Dennis Lynn Rader (born March 9, 1945) is an American serial killer known as BTK (an abbreviation he gave himself, for "bind, torture, kill"), the BTK Strangler or the BTK Killer. Between 1974 and 1991, he killed ten people in Wichita and Par ...

, the BTK Killer, was reading when he was arrested in 2005.

Outline

''Serial Killers'' is divided into three parts: Part one covers the history of serial murder from its ancient roots to approximately the mid-1960s, when Vronsky argues it became popular in its

postmodernity Postmodernity (post-modernity or the postmodern condition) is the economic or cultural state or condition of society which is said to exist ''after'' modernity. Some schools of thought hold that modernity ended in the late 20th century – in the ...

. Vronsky proposes that modern culture, media, and society degrade certain classes of people in the perception of homicidal psychopaths, who serially target and murder them in an attempt to satisfy increasingly addictive sexual, hedonistic fantasies. Vronsky points to the high proportion of street prostitutes, runaway youths, cruising homosexuals, or people who are homeless, impoverished, disabled, or elderly among serial killer victims; i.e., victims who are often characterized as society's "throwaways". Vronsky argues that only the presence of children and young college girls among preferred victims of serial killers raise concerns about these predators in society at large. He reviews several sources of statistical data on serial homicide, its patterns, and trends, particularly in the United States, and explores the myth of the recent "serial killer epidemic". Part 2 focuses on the psychopathology of serial killers, their evolution from child to adult, and the various emerging and evolving categories and profiles of serial offenders. Vronsky points out that law enforcement, psychologists, psychiatrists, and criminologists disagree among themselves as to how to categorize the broad range of offender types, and explores some of the different approaches, all illustrated with case study examples. Part 3 focuses on the investigation of serial homicide, particularly on the various profiling systems from the FBI's "crime scene analysis" profiling, to British law enforcement's "psychological profiling", and Canadian police development of "geographic profiling". Vronsky explores the pros and cons of the various systems with case study examples of how profiling has both succeeded and failed in homicide investigations.Vronsky, ''Serial Killlers''. pp. 321-383 ''Serial Killers'' concludes with a chapter based on FBI studies and statements by serial killers and a few survivors of serial killer attacks as how to best survive an encounter with a serial killer.

References

External links

Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters table of contents
{{DEFAULTSORT:Serial Killers The method and madness of monsters Non-fiction books about serial killers 2004 non-fiction books Berkley Books books