This is one of the few books about serial killers and their crimes told in large part by the killers themselves, or, rather,
the killer himself. The author is a prizewinning journalist, and has interviewed not only Keith Hunter Jesperson, the brutal
serial killer himself, but also his family. The man was a trucker, married twelve years, with three children, when he and his wife split up. Involved with another woman who threatened to abandon him, he picked up a sweet but slightly retarded girl at a bar, used her sexually, beat her severely and then strangled her and dumped her along a Washington State (USA) highway. Two other people claimed credit for the
murder afterwards, were convicted and sent to jail -- causing the real murderer to feel both relief and pique, since others were getting credit (and notoriety) for
his deed, and he was still "The Invisible Man." He began, eventually, a killing spree, where, he boasted, he killed eight women.
The author tries very hard to trace the reasons, the necessities and the development that led to this hideous string of crimes. Jesperson has written extensively and at length about himself, his crimes, his
movation, state of mind and ideas and ideation in these experiences and elsewhere. Mr. Olsen quotes these as well as excerpts from other more theoretical texts in an attempt to understand, as well as depict, these acts and their sources.