Cat and Mouse: Mind Games With a Serial Killer [Hardcover]

Brian Lane (Author), Bill Suff (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1997

Based on interviews with William "Billy" Lester Suff, convicted in 1995 of torturing, maiming, and murdering twelve prostitutes in California, a psychological study of Suff traces his sordid career and explores his unflappable duplicity.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

After Bill Suff, known as the Riverside Prostitute Strangler, was convicted of mutilating and murdering 12 Southern California women from 1989 to 1991, he was interviewed extensively by TV writer Lane, who is also Suff's acting attorney. Short on factual narrative and heavy on the author's impressions, the result is not a typical true-crime story. By including 150 pages of Suff's original writings, Lane achieves his goal of humanizing Suff "despite his deeds"?although the presence of Suff's cookbook, "Bill's Vittles and Fixin's," is bizarre. The author is less adept at explaining Suff's terrible crimes and compulsions. Lane does not offer a standard psychiatric analysis, but Suff appears to be a sadistic psychopath adamantly proclaiming his innocence, the evidence be damned. The "cooperation" of such a personality is practically worthless?a "mind game" the author can't win. Despite its drawbacks, this book is likely to attract its share of readers.?Gregor A. Preston, formerly with Univ. of California Lib., Davis
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

A lawyer and television writer tries to write the story of a real killer. Lane, whose credits include scripts for Hart to Hart and Star Trek: The Next Generation, received a collect call one night from convicted killer Suff, currently on California's death row for murdering prostitutes (he was convicted of 12 murders and suspected of more). Lane eventually became Suff's attorney. But this isn't so much a history of the case as the record of an encounter with ``a living, breathing serial killer.'' Lane takes an unaccountably cocky attitude that he will reveal the truth about Suff. This jumble begins with Lane's statement that ``there are no `facts' in this book. . . . Everything is impression,'' and continues with a sickening chart detailing what kind of evidence was found on the bodies of Suff's victims. The book also includes some of Suff's short stories and excerpts from an odd cookbook that don't tell us much about the mind of a serial killer. Though Lane has many murder victims to discuss--including one of Suff's own children--he scarcely describes them. Suff, according to police and prosecutors, was a uniquely talented killer who approached the mutilation of his victims as though it were art. He roamed the streets of Riverside, Calif., in his van, looking for prostitutes to kill, all the while maintaining a fairly normal life. Lane actually has a few valid things to say about the killings, but spends much of his time analyzing himself in the wake of a horrible accident in which he killed his best friend, brother, and mother. While Suff's case clearly raises some interesting questions about the nature of madness and violence, and about the factors that create a serial killer, Lane doesn't seriously address them, or arrive at any useful conclusions. (photos, not seen) (First printing of 40,000; author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 455 pages
• Publisher: Newstar Pr (March 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 078710860X
• ISBN-13: 978-0787108601
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 1.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #527,271 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Should have been better, October 11, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Cat and Mouse: Mind Games With a Serial Killer (Hardcover)

There is material for a great book in here somewhere: prostitute killer Bill Suff, despite his ordinary exterior, was one weird dude. Most of his victims he left posed in strange positions. One had her head buried in the ground, another was dressed in a bizarre outfit complete with comical striped socks, a light bulb carefully inserted inside her womb. Obviously, the guy had some issues. Lane promises to dig deep into Suff's psyche, but by the end of the book he has merely scratched the surface. He reprints pages of Suff's own writing (including a cookbook, of all things), which isn't as interesting as he would like us to believe, and spends much of the book ruminating over his own life, which is definitely tragic and twisted in its own right, but not relevant enough to the case of Bill Suff to merit inclusion (maybe in another book?). There is no mistaking that Lane is a talented writer, and that there are sections of the book that are genuinely insightful, but all the more reason to be disappointed when the whole thing doesn't cohere in the end. The best that can be said for it is that it is probably worth being frustated by.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Appalled, October 28, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Cat and Mouse: Mind Games With a Serial Killer (Hardcover)

I am appalled that this book would even be published. Not only is this book unnecessary but distasteful and disrespectful, especially to the victims' families. I am a daughter of one of the victims, and to hear that this garbage is out there and that William Suff is getting any type of recognition as well as a profit for the heinous crimes is disturbing. Maybe there should be a book about the hard times and the pain and the impact this made on each family and what they had to overcome. Not some sick deranged man, that is getting credit for killing women.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars hideous bilge, September 19, 2005

By 

Professor Rowe "Dr. Rowe" (North Colorado) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cat and Mouse: Mind Games With a Serial Killer (Hardcover)

Hack screenwriter Brian Lane tries to capitalize on his being a serial killer's lawyer with this mess of a publication, a witch's brew of foul ingredients: multiple murderer/mutilator William Suff's own pathetic fiction, Lane's wimpy justifications of his own unfortunate past, and believe it or not: a cookbook by Suff ! Includes sickening photos of Suff's victims, and ludricrous alibis for the very unphotogenic Suff.