Killing for Company: The Story of a Man Addicted to Murder [Mass Market Paperback]

Brian Masters (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1994

Drawing on the personal journals of mass murderer Dennis Nilsen, this recounting of the exploits of the mild mannered civil servant details how he strangled fifteen men over four years, kept their dead bodies as companions, and was undone by blocked plumbing. PW. Reprint.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Dennis Nilsen was arrested in February 1983 after the plumbing in his suburban London apartment was found to be clogged with body parts. "Are we talking about one body or two," a detective asked. Nilsen, a 35-year-old civil servant, replied: "Fifteen or sixteen, since 1978. I'll tell you everything." Besides confessing to the police, Nilsen wrote extensively to Masters from prison and offered him his journals. Using these sources and his considerable journalistic skill, the author ( Moliere ) fashions a stunning account of the largest mass murderer in British history. Nilsen is depicted as a lonely, articulate man who met men in pubs and cafes, invited them to his flat for drinks and killed them, fearing that they would leave the next day. Nilsen's trial was brief and expert testimony cast little light on the grisly events (Nilsen dismembered his victims, stuffying body parts under floorboards or boiling off flesh in a soup pot). Noting that the plea of insanity was not accepted either for Nilsen or for Jeffrey Dahmer, who was convicted of similar acts in the U.S. in 1992, Masters suggests that the current legal definitions of insanity need reworking. Photos not seen by PW. True Crime Book Club selection.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

A successor of sorts to Capote's In Cold Blood, this English psychological investigation was not published here for close to ten years or, chillingly, just two years after the Dahmer mass murders in Milwaukee. In a way, the account of Dennis Nilsen, now imprisoned for life for six murders and with most of the text related in "his own write," is gripping. Who can, after all, understand the impulses and motivations behind such slaughter? Masters comes close, by his friendliness with prisoner B62006 and his determination to uncover all the details. In a way, too, this smacks of tabloidism, the media's propensity to analyze and reanalyze sordid crimes. Well-written, well-documented, this book may nonetheless upset sensitive stomachs. Barbara Jacobs --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Dell; Revised edition (November 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0440220432
• ISBN-13: 978-0440220435
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #620,590 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not for the squeamish, April 26, 1998

By 

Debbie King (Durham City, Co Durham United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Killing for Company: The Story of a Man Addicted to Murder (Mass Market Paperback)

This book grabs your attention from the very first paragraph as it describes the events leading up to Dennis Nilsen's arrest. It explains in detail Nilsen's early years, and the profound psychological effect on the 6 year-old Nilsen when he sees his first dead body - the corpse of his beloved grandfather.
Although Nilsen's crimes were horrific and, to us, senseless, you cannot help but feel immensely sorry for a man who is so consumed with loneliness that he prefers the company of a corpse to no company at all, hence the title of the book. One can but imagine what might have been if Nilsen had been able to form a stable and secure relationship with someone.


An extremely interesting book for anyone interested in the criminal mind - but definitely not for the squeamish.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dahmer Was Not Unique, February 20, 2002

By 

Sires "I enjoy mysteries, historical and proc... (Chesapeake, OH, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Killing for Company: The Story of a Man Addicted to Murder (Mass Market Paperback)

After the Jeffrey Dahmer story broke, it was easy to think that no one else like him ever did or ever could have lived. After all, his motive for killing was bizarre to say the least-- he wanted to keep the men he picked up from leaving him. Then a few years later I picked up Brian Masters' Killing for Company almost by chance-- It was shocking: here was Dahmer's mirror image in a quiet British civil servant named Dennis Nilson. For some reason his crimes had not been publicized in the US.

Nilson's crimes had been discovered in 1983 when the plumbing in his apartment buildng started to back up. Workmen were called in and discovered what looked like human flesh was the problem. The police questioned Nilson who confessed to his crime. He had been actively killing young men for 4 years and using their bodies in bizarre tableaus of domesticity and no one had noticed--would probably not have noticed had it not been that his plumbing couldn't handle his method of body disposal.

Masters' book does a very good job of laying out Nilson's life. It is definitely not a quickie books churned out to take advantage of a sensational crime. If you are at all interesed in the darkest, most tabu areas of the human soul this is a very interesting read.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The Man Who Didn't Play Nice With Others, October 27, 2011

By 

Dan Bogaty "Mr. Congeniality" - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Killing for Company: The Story of a Man Addicted to Murder (Mass Market Paperback)

Before there was Jeffrey Dahmer, there was - in the late 1970s and early 1980s in London - Dennis Nilsen, whose story is presented in Brian Masters' KILLING FOR COMPANY. While Nilsen was not identical to Dahmer, there being no mention of cannibalization for example, and while any cooking of body parts that took place was strictly utilitarian for the purpose of making disposal easier, he was still close enough for government work.
Nilsen is portrayed as an essentially normal if slightly colorless man, a civil servant who, while somewhat irritating personally, was quite good at his job. He did, however, have one unfortunate habit. He would pick up men younger than he at gay bars, get drunk with them and bring them home and listen to music with them. The fortunate would then spend the night and leave the next day. The less fortunate would leave in pieces after Nilsen had kept them with him for a while, in one piece though quite dead, sleeping with them, bathing them, and watching TV with them.

KILLING FOR COMPANY is written as a serious book which attempts to provide a psychoanalysis of Nilsen, to try to explain what in his past would produce a reasonably intelligent and competent man who possessed what I think we can all agree was an unusual deviation. Masters' research is extensive, his writing adult and factual.
The first part of the book deals in considerable depth with Nilsen's life as a child and a young man. This is well done and interesting as is the recounting of many of the murders he committed.

So why only two stars? Well, as hard as I tried, I couldn't finish this book. It got to the point where I was forcing myself to read it and could only read a few pages at a time. The reason is that it became really boring to me. The trial section goes on forever and became my own private death march, but I don't think that was the main problem.
Neither is the fact that the author makes extensive use of Nilsen's writings about what he became and why, in an attempt to explain him. But Masters is not a psychologist and his conclusions, while not ignorant nor necessarily wrong, have an amateur feel to them.
No, I think the main reason I finally gave up on this book, 300 plus pages into it, is that except for his spectacularly unique (until Dahmer) method of making friends, Nilsen is boring as are his writings, and, given that they are used extensively, the denseness of Masters' presentation slows the pace - and for me the interest level - to a crawl.

I actually feel that there are a number of true crime readers who may like this book, and I've tried to note the positives, but try as I might, I couldn't finish it.