The sociopath and the demon

John Wayne Cleaver fits the perfect prototype of a serial killer. He’s obsessed with fire, has tortured animals and wets the bed. These three characteristics, called the MacDonald triad, are commonly found in 95 percent of serial killers.

Not only these traits, but other antisocial behavior as well, leads John’s psychiatrist to explain to John that he has all the characteristics to be diagnosed as a sociopath one day.

If only his psychiatrist, his mother, aunt and the other kids at school knew what else went on in John’s head—they would really be worried. In I Am Not a Serial Killer, readers get to know the real John, including the violence-driven, human-stalking monster inside of him.

If you find yourself making it past the first chapter, where John thoroughly describes the process of embalming a dead body, you might be able to handle some of the other grotesque and shocking descriptions of carnage throughout the book.

Being around dead bodies most of the time (John and his mother run a mortuary and live above it), John is constantly haunted with a fascination of one day killing and looking at his own victim’s newly-deceased body.

As we soon find out, John is a smart 15 year old. In fact, he doesn’t want to be a sociopath. He doesn’t want to kill anyone. If anything, he tries to get rid of the feeling of loneliness that makes it hard for him to interact with other people. John wants to feel emotionally connected with other people.

So instead of giving in to his inner monster, he creates his own sets of rules and regulations to follow in order to keep his inner demons in check. Unlike other serial killers we see in books or movies or TV shows,John creates his rules by studying other serial killers in the past. It’s an ongoing self-assigned homework assignment he finds enjoyable.

In this story though, it isn’t enough that John has to battle his inner demons—we soon find out that there’s a new killer in town. It’s an actual demon, and John may be the only one who realizes what this killer is capable of.

Now, John has to learn to rip down the walls he has put up to keep his inner monster inside, and instead let it loose. But the killer that he has to conquer is far different from any “serial killer” he has read or heard about—he’s worse and more dangerous.

In Dan Wells’ debut novel, the author illustrates a world of the dangerous antisocial behavior of a teenage boy, mixed with the threat of a supernatural killer. Wells invites us into the mind of a disturbed John, who becomes excited as he hears about a possible serial killer in his town. His excitement is spoiled only to find that the killer is a supernatural force that’s killing for a different purpose.

The question is: Who will survive in the end, the future serial killer or the demon?