****THE LAST BOOK OF 2020**** Book 52 - Killing for Company by Brian Masters

Reading date - December 2020

Taking into account that this is book 52 and there are 52 weeks in a year, this would mean that going on this blog alone, I have read one book a week which I am very impressed with.  I am even more impressed because this blog didn't start with the first book I read this year.  No, no, there are five books which have not been reviewed here as I read them pre-covid times but still in 2020.

Anyway, the year went out with me reading a book about a serial killer.  My first ever proper book about serial killing.  I watch a lot of stuff about serial killers and murders in the UK but I seldom read anything about them because I just don't mix my mediums. 

Everyone and their cat knows about Dennis Nilsen (DN), the sad, lonely, closeted homosexual who killed boys, jizzed over them, cut them up, cooked them and then flushed them down the bog.  Jeez, what an epitaph. 

There was a dramatisation of the whole affair last year on ITV which was loosely based on this book.  It's because of that dramatisation that I was given this book..and cos I don't shut up about serial killers.

I started out really liking this book, it was written as if it wasn't real, it was like a story.  It doesn't begin on the night that the police were waiting for DN, it starts way back in the day.  I should say that this book is written with a slant to understanding the man and why he was the way that he was.  Therefore, it starts centuries back explaining what his ancestors were like in Scotland, how they grew up and why they were so tough and sometimes, emotionless.  It then moves into talking about his family down to his grandparents and his mum.  That got my goat from the start, as if living a life like that is in any way a pass to becoming a murderer.  So many people in those days had it hard and didn't have progeny who ended up killing.  

    

The book carries on, going through how his parents met, his dad left his mum, his childhood and how he developed as a child (not well, of course).  It also details how he was at school and what he enjoyed doing.  Into adult life and then when he moved to London.

It's no big secret that the psychologists believe he killed people for company because he saw the dead body of his grandpa when he was a child.  I can't connect in my mind how they think that that he thinks killing someone means they never leave him because he surely saw that his grandpa was buried so therefore, left him.

The actual killings aren't detailed until about the eighth chapter and then they are in detail and graphic so you have been warned (there are also sketches at the back of the book showing how he left the bodies).  

The last chapters are very heavy on the psycho-analysis of DN and why he behaved in the way that he did and these chapters bored me a bit because they were so dry.  For me, the book could have done without these but I know it is more about just the crimes he committed, it's trying to understand why he did it.

The more I read the book, the more I realised how much the author was making the reader feel sorry for DN for being such a sad, neglected boy who ended up killing people just to have their company.  That is a ridiculous take.  For that reason, I could not give this book five stars.  It should have been more clinical in that respect and let the reader make their own decision instead of forcing one down their throats.  It reminded me a bit of that Pistorious doco on the BBC last year where it totally glossed over him murdering his bird but focused instead on him having no legs and doing good stuff for other people.  Mate, Hitler didn't eat animals but he still pretty much terminated the Jews..

The book explained clearly how DN had found men, entertained them and killed them.  It also told of what he did once he had killed them (dressed them up, hidden them under floorboard and then burnt their bodies in bonfires).

The book was fair to the victims as it explained what they were like (I believe most of this information is taken directly from DN himself so I am unsure how accurate it is) and it didn't sensationalise DN but as I said above, I feel it was a bit too pandering towards him and how he should have sympathy.  A lot of people grow up the same as he did and don't kill people to keep them close to them.

I'd still recommend it if you're interested in this kind of thing, it's a good read.  I am itching to read my next serial killer book but I have others to read before this!