Customer Reviews

Hunting the Devil

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I'm not a big fan of the serial killer genreóbe it on the thriller shelves of the bookstore, or on film (Se7en and Manhunter are the only two serial killer movies I've ever really liked). However, this story about the hunt for Soviet serial killer Andrei Chikatilo is fascinating, despite not being particularly well written. I had never heard of Chikatilo, but from the late '70s to late '80s he killed at least 53 women and children in the Rostov province of Russia. His methods and predilections were particularly gruesome, as he favored slowly stabbing or hammering his victims to death before eviscerating them, masturbating over them, and sometimes cooking and eating part of them. This is a man who left the house every day with a knapsack containing a knife, change of clothes, and small cooking pot, just in case the opportunity presented itself.

Longtime Russian expert Lourie tells the story mostly through the eyes of Issa Kostoev, the special investigator who led the years-long quest to bring Chikatilo to justice. The investigators were hampered by the randomness of the killings, the relative lack of research into DNA in the Soviet Union, the lack of criminal psychology as a discipline, as well as the laziness and sloppiness of local police, who had botched previous efforts (at one point they had actually arrested Chikatilo, only to release him). Since Lourie relies on interviews with Kostoev, it's hard to know how accurate the picture of the investigation is, but the story he tells is compelling and will certainly appeal to those with an interest in the procedural aspects of criminology. The investigator's own life story is fascinating; an Ingush from the Caucuses, his family was deported to the Kazakh steppe during WWII by Stalin. There, he lost brothers and sisters to famine, and his thirst for justice was bred. By the book's end, he has been made a General and is being asked by his countrymen to come home and lead the political struggle for full restoration of the homeland.

Lourie's reliance on the single source is sometimes a fault, as Kostoev's own preoccupations are given precedence. There is rather an overemphasis (and occasional repetitiveness) on the thought processes involved in the interrogation and getting a confession from Chikatilo. A writer more experienced in writing about crime would likely have cut some of the fat here. One also feels like there might have been a little more drama wrung from the hunt, not to mention a greater vividness to the details. These might be found in one of the three other books written about the case (none of which I've read): Comrade Chikatilo: The Psychopathology of Russia's Notorious Serial Killer by Mikhail Krivich, The Killer Department: Detective Viktor Burakov's Eight-Year Hunt for the Most Savage Serial Killer of Our Times by Robert Cullen, or Red Ripper: Inside the Mind of Russia's Most Brutal Serial Killer by Peter Conradi. There's also a film called Citizen X that's been made about the hunt, although it's hard to to imagine Irishman Stephen Rea passing himself off as Ingush!

Andrei Chikatilo was the most infamous Russian serial killer of all time, and with good reason. His reign of terror was as long as his court antics were bizarre. He is in the first rank of cannibal killers, right up there with more familiar monsters like Jeffrey Dalmer and Ed Gein. Although within the police state of the Soviet Union he was able to operate much longer. But this book is as much about the pursuer as the pursued, indeed Inspector Issa Kostoev really takes center stage. The story is told from a cops perspective and even details the politics that surround the investigation. Especially interesting are the appearances of other less well-known deviants that Kostoev encounters along the way (like Anthony Slivko). Also of interest were the cat and mouse techniques that Kostoev used to break Chikatilo during interrogation, and how the killers party affiliation helped him early in his career. There is a lot of interesting stuff here, but those seeking understanding of the why of what Chaikatilo did must look elsewhere.