#AmReading
- hphorton
- Jul 21, 2015
- 2 min read
Unless you're a snake, a shark, or colony collapse disorder, it isn't easy to scare me. I cut my teeth on Stephen King, did my due diligence with Shelley and Stoker and Stevenson and Poe, came of age with Clive Barker and H. P. Lovecraft, and in time progressed into Cormac McCarthy and other purveyors of the horror done when the monster is of our actual world. Not to mention the miles of scary movies behind my eyes. I have written about evil in books and screenplays - most notably in my upcoming novel Heritage in which a former child-abductee grown into a public relations manager for other missing children must work a case with eerie similarities to his own - which means I've had to attempt and enter a mindset in which evil isn't evil at all, but rather one's nature, the only Truth. And nowhere, in no media or mindset, have I ever experienced this perspective more palpably than James Ellroy's ridiculously frightening novel Killer on the Road.
Originally published as Silent Terror in 1986, Killer on the Road is the purported prison-house memoir of one Martin Plunkett, a serial killer responsible for anywhere between 40 and 100 murders committed over a ten-year period. Plunkett possesses a genius-level IQ, which is apparent by the insightful if chilling analysis of self and actions that compromise the majority of the narrative, with other perspective being added by various newspaper clippings recounting Plunkett's kills, case notes from detectives working these cases, and diary entries from Special Agent Thomas Dusenberg, first head of the FBI's Serial Killer Task Force. Though there are some truly gruesome murder scenes, the most terrifying parts of this novel occur in Plunkett's mind, in the realization of his nature and the painstaking lengths he goes to to both protect and indulge this nature. If Plunkett was real, Charlie Manson would cower.
Ellroy (L.A. Confidential) writes Plunkett as measured and methodical with flights of mania underneath, a perfect amalgam of madness, at once so certain in his insantiy and at other times overwhelmed by it. Plunkett is self-aware of his compulsions, and these two facets together make for a swath of blood from coast to coast.
My intent in reading Killer on the Road was to inform my writing mind on how killers think when engaged in roving missions of mayhem, in preparation for writing my third novel Eustace Saves later this summer. And though Martin Plunkett is miles away from my novel's murderous protagonist - in terms of both mental and physical acuity - the book served its purpose of letting me into a mind tuned to see as beautiful what most of us consider heinous and unimagineable. And beyond all that, it was a damn gripping read. If you have a strong stomach and a nightlight, I say give it a go.
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