Customer Reviews

Talking with Serial Killers: The Most Evil People in the World Tell Their Own Stories

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

When a book is subtitled The Most Evil People in the World Tell Their Own Stories you would expect large portion to be interviews with them and their own words. This was my belief when I bought the book and I was surprised not to find that.

There are good backgrounds on each offender and their laundry list of crimes without too much detail. There are also times that they are quoted directly but for the most part the story is relayed by the author and the end of each chapter is stamped "from an interview with...". Some offender's are not quoted directly at all.

Overall, it's a decent book if you do not know about the crimes or offenders. If you are looking for a scholarly or clinical insight into the minds of these offenders, look elsewhere. It surely isn't here.

Author does not get as much information from the subjects as the title suggests. It talks more about the generalities of the crimes which is easily obtained from internet research. Also, the author give himself a lot of credit for his unsuprising findings - however, I find that most authors of true-crime non-fiction are that way. Gives information on little-known killers - ie: Carol Bundy.

This author is so full of himself! He talks about himself nearly as much as the killers. If anyone says they are an author, and writes a codenmed killer enough, they would probably be granted an interview too. I was disappointed in this book!

I read the reviews before I bought this book. The reviews were rather mixed, so I decided I would read it and decide for myself. Well... the author IS full of himself. He is also from England, and he uses different British words for the "American" words we are used to, which isn't bad, just very annoying. He takes a lot of poetic license in this book, writing a lot of times of the events the way he thought they would have happened. One reviewer was correct, you could get the information found in this book on the internet for free. I also think he left out several serial killers that I would consider more evil than the ones he wrote about. But, he probably wasn't able to get "exclusives" or interviews from the other killers, so he left them out. If you can get the book cheap, but it. Otherwise, don't bother.

This book was mildly interesting, but way too long on details of the crimes and really lacking in insight about what makes these folks tick. For 99¢, OK. Anything more, don't bother.

This book is a page turner. I'm a huge fan of true crime but some books in print speak too much to the author's research and life and not the criminal's mind and life. This book gets to the nitty gritty, immediately and keeps you turning the pages.

I agree with previous reviewers that the book was pretty light on substance. The "interviews" were pretty much non-events. Aside from that, it was pretty interesting.

The book was interesting though I have read better. The author is British and uses a few colloquials that are out of character for us in America. Other than that it's ok.

Henry Lucas. Arthur Shawcross. Carol Bundy. Ronald DeFeo Jr. Aileen Wuornos. Harvey Carignan. John Scripps. Michael Ross. Kenneth McDuff, Douglas Clark. For those who follow the true crime genre, this list of names sends a chill down their spines as they realise the list is one of infamous serial killers from the recent past.

Christopher Berry-Dee is a criminologist, and the editor of New Criminologist magazine. This book is a compilation of his interviews, both in person and letters or audio, with various serial killers. The reader is given a synopsis of each criminal's crimes and a view into their early background. The details of the crimes are interspersed with the actual quotes from the killers about the various crimes. There are excuses, protestations of innocence. Berry-Dee records it all, but lets the reader know that these men and women were convicted and put on Death Rows around the country for valid reasons.

This book is recommended for true crime buffs. They will read about some killers who are new to them, as well as having the psyche of more famous killers explored.

I found this book to be pretty good. The interviews itself were not long, but touched on enough on the actual interviews to give you the mentality each killer had. It gave great depth and background of each story of each of the killers, eventually unfolding into an interview with the killer at the end of each chapter, then explains their current where abouts. The detail was great, and I loved how each true story unfolded. It was written well, however, I agree that more of the interviews themselves should have been entered into this book. But I can also see if only the highlights of each interview was entered...it maybe made the book only half as long. This might have been a space issue to where the writer had to try and cram two novels into one. None the less...I thought it was written well. I enjoyed it greatly. Some people that rated this says the author is full of himself but they fail to realize that the author is one of the world's leading criminologists so keep this in mind when reading this. I think this fact alone is why the author was able to write this book so well. The detail is incredible of each murderer.