Do Not Scream

 Q: Whom do you consider the most intelligent, diabolical, or frightening criminal you’ve encountered on the page, and why?

 

- from Susan, the wimp

 

I have to begin by confessing I don’t even begin the books I know are going to scare me into sleepless nights, so Hannibal Lector isn’t in my head. No flesh-eaters, no serial killers of children, no serial killers, period, if I can help it, and definitely not those where the author has invited me into their perverted heads. I do stumble onto a few of these where I didn’t realize it, and if the evil begins to slip out of the book and into my head for real, I just stop. There’s so much of that that is real in the world, and I am one of those readers (and moviegoers) who can’t back away easily and say, like a mantra, “It’s only fiction, it’s only acting…” I am susceptible!

 

There was a novel that caught me unprepared. I can’t remember the male author’s name but it was about some men who hold a beautiful woman captive, first as a lark. Their cruelty increases, they become sadistic, and it ends badly for her, of course. A woman held and tortured for their pleasure, because they can. I kept reading because I wanted her to escape, to get revenge, but it didn’t happen and it haunted me for years, left a bad taste in my mouth and a hideous image in my mind. Anyone know the book?

 

Having said all of that, I will cop to being fascinated by Tom Ripley, such an amiable killer, so charmingly false, so eaten by envy, such a perfect sociopath! Intelligent, diabolical, flexible, and persistent. Funny, though, he doesn’t frighten me. Patricia Highsmith makes him understandably human, albeit deeply flawed, fascinating. No dripping fangs!

 

Halloween brings out the fangs, dripping with blood, the Norman Bates, the Regans, Carries – all the demons that can get under our skins and give us nightmares. More power to those who can enjoy the horror, laugh it off, and come back for more! I do not retreat to the school of cupcake murders, but I keep a wary eye on books that begin by telling you several young girls have vanished. Too much like what I see in the news and can’t put aside.

 

Yup, I’m a wimp.

 

 

I would have uploaded some of the scary movie images, but I was almost as frightened of abusing copyright law as I was of the shower scene in Psycho! Instead, a little gentle marketing note – books out now. Thanks for the poster, Gabriel!