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Introduction

Introduction Victoria Madden and Harriet Stilley ‘[You] are the Mount Rushmore of murder, […] the definition of American success. They write books about you. Make movies of your life. Years after your death people continue to be enthralled. You’ve made your mark in history. Like the Iliad, your stories will live forever.’ –‘Devil’s Night,’ American Horror Story: Hotel (2015) ‘Just about every American can identify Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer.’ – Julie B. Wiest, Creating Cultural Monsters: Serial Murder in America (124) ‘Everybody’s fascinated with the notion that there is a cause and effect,’ claims notorious serial killer Ted Bundy, quoted in the Netflix original series, Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes (2019) – that we can ‘put our finger on it,’ and reassuringly rationalise the genesis of the uniquely modern phenomenon of the American serial killer. But when there is ‘absolutely nothing’ in the background of a serial murderer that would lead one to believe they were ‘capable of committing murder,’ how do we begin to acclimatise ourselves to this violent defect of contemporary history? More challengingly, how do we bring depth to our collective portrait of what constitutes a murderer, so that we may then self-exempt http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Crime Fiction Studies Edinburgh University Press

Introduction

Madden, Victoria; Stilley, Harriet
Crime Fiction Studies , Volume 3 (1): 9 – Mar 1, 2022
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Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
Copyright © Edinburgh University Press
ISSN
2517-7982
eISSN
2517-7990
DOI
10.3366/cfs.2022.0056
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Abstract

Victoria Madden and Harriet Stilley ‘[You] are the Mount Rushmore of murder, […] the definition of American success. They write books about you. Make movies of your life. Years after your death people continue to be enthralled. You’ve made your mark in history. Like the Iliad, your stories will live forever.’ –‘Devil’s Night,’ American Horror Story: Hotel (2015) ‘Just about every American can identify Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer.’ – Julie B. Wiest, Creating Cultural Monsters: Serial Murder in America (124) ‘Everybody’s fascinated with the notion that there is a cause and effect,’ claims notorious serial killer Ted Bundy, quoted in the Netflix original series, Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes (2019) – that we can ‘put our finger on it,’ and reassuringly rationalise the genesis of the uniquely modern phenomenon of the American serial killer. But when there is ‘absolutely nothing’ in the background of a serial murderer that would lead one to believe they were ‘capable of committing murder,’ how do we begin to acclimatise ourselves to this violent defect of contemporary history? More challengingly, how do we bring depth to our collective portrait of what constitutes a murderer, so that we may then self-exempt

Journal

Crime Fiction Studies – Edinburgh University Press

Published: Mar 1, 2022

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