I started this journey with very specific types of serial killer fiction in mind. I wanted to read POV serial killer fiction with a focus on the difference through time and regarding gender. But as I read, that scope has widened and shifted. Throughout it all, the one type of book I wasn’t interested in was the more classic, mainstream books that tend to take the detective or journalist POV. I was also sticking to genres I’m comfortable with: horror, literary, and the occasional romance if it’s dark and/or sarcastically witty. I could maybe be convinced to read a thriller, but wasn’t super interested in crime, procedural or even mystery. So how I ended up reading a cozy serial killer book with multi POV including a detective and emergency room doctor (while slightly different that detective and journalist, same vibe), I’m not sure. I suppose I thought I needed to give thrillers and more mainstream books a fair chance, and the setup for Please Don’t Tell sounded dark and scary enough to hold my interest. (Spoiler: that setup dies fairly quickly, being replaced with three man-obsessed women trying to find boyfriends).
I am 100% not the target audience for this book. Although I like some romance, I feel like a book with a serial killer running about should still be able to pass the Bechdel test — but as is, the serial killer never felt important to the characters. They were much more interested in who they would be dating than the killer roaming the streets. Which, maybe that was intentional — showing that everyday life goes on and all is normal until tragedy strikes, with a type of almost voyeurism from the reader, heightened by the knowledge of the stalking serial killer. But it didn’t feel like that was what this book was going for.
Still, I’ll see what I can parse out about this take on serial killers and what it reveals about society. But take what I’m saying with a grain of salt because, again, it isn’t a book that was depicting a society I am actively part of.
Third Person POV and the Exploitation of the Serial Killer
Please Don’t Tell starts with a scene of the serial killer kidnapping, raping, and nearly killing his latest victim. There is something about the far third person POV that feels almost exploitative of the serial killer trope. This could just be because I’m partial to first person POV, but to me it felt like in not getting close to either the victim or the killer, the act itself became the focus. And the act, dehumanized, became the inciting incident — meant to pull on the reader’s sense of right and wrong without requiring emotional effort. The reader neither has to feel the fear and pain of the victim nor be complicit in the act. I think in a way this shows a desensitization to serial killers caused by the large amounts of media focused on the topic — both fiction and true crime. Again, perhaps I’m the wrong audience just because I’ve been reading so many serial killer books lately, because the opening scene was quite graphic and perhaps that would shock a mainly romance reader who is coming in for the love story as opposed to the serial killer. But I do think there’s something in the procedural genre that distances the crimes of the killer, using them to set up the story but not fully examining them on an emotional level. It feels like a short-code for “this is the worst of the worst” and, because that trope has sunk so thoroughly into the public imagination, it needs just vague brush strokes to set it up — not as a scene of thrill or fear, but as a moral signaling for the book.
The other aspect that feels like an exploitation of the serial killer trope is that the serial killer feels like a composite of every serial killer written. There is no distinctive reason for him to be the way he is. Instead, we get conflicting stories about his childhood and first kill and what feels like a completely out of character finale in which he drops his well-educated “facade” and swears at the main character. Part of this feels like the killer doesn’t need a solid story — he is meant to be the boogeyman. A force, not a character. And so we pull on familiar tropes to sketch him out as an antagonistic sensation rather than a person.
When talking about exploiting the trope, I can’t leave out the woman who was in the opening scene. Elaine is the serial killer’s victim, and though she isn’t technically fridged (she isn’t killed, and there is not someone avenging her), I feel like her story line bordered on exploitative. She makes it to the hospital but is in a coma and no one is quite sure if she’ll pull through. Throughout the book a main source of tension is that she might wake up and name the killer and that the killer has access to the hospital, so might finish her off. In the end, she is given a “happy ending” in which she wakes up and the main character gives her sexy pajamas so she can feel like a “whole woman” again. While I understand the story isn’t about her, I feel like her arc would have been so much stronger if she had woken up and revealed the killer or if she got to define her own recovery instead of pushing sexuality onto her as something that heals after attempted murder and rape.
Instead, the book focuses on the next potential victim, using the opening scene solely to show the fate that awaits her if they don’t figure out who the killer is. But the shortcut of these tropes allows the reader to be “invested” in the story without having to be deeply scared or even nervous about the outcome. The tone and distance of that first scene somehow signals that everything will be okay and the good guys will win. (Well, that and the fact that the women in the book seemed much more interested in their dating lives than the serial killer circling around them.
Multi POV and the Ripple Effect
Despite the distance of third POV, one interesting thing that it does is allows us to see a lot of characters and how the serial killer affects many lives, often with the people unaware of how he touches their existence. I talked a little about the voyeur effect of third person already. Digging a little deeper, the reader can feel something sinister in knowing the serial killer is circling this group of people while they go about their daily lives. As I said before, for having a serial killer on the lose and multiple victims brought to the hospital where the main character works, none of the characters seem overly concerned with the killer. The actions of the killer instigates not only the thriller, but also the romances of the book — Fen and Alex wouldn’t meet if Alex wasn’t driving up to San Francisco to look for the killer. Vivi and Brad wouldn’t have crossed paths if not for the first victim. And JC… well, ironically the one character who is almost killed is the one whose life changes the least due to the serial killer’s actions.
In a way, the multi POV ripple effect shows us how fragile our lives are. We’re worried about clothes and jobs and significant others when there could be someone planning to murder us. The serial killer trope in many ways represents a sphere of chaos in the everyday life. His existence shouldn’t be possible — no human should be that evil — and yet he does exist, and those pockets of chaos are maneuvering our lives more than we realize.
Upholding the Status Quo
If the serial killer is a pocket of chaos, every other character in the cozy serial killer narrative represents the status quo. The cops are good guys, working hard to catch and stop chaos. The doctors (who aren’t serial killers) have ethics and uphold the moral code of the hippocratic oath. The younger sister is a bit of a firecracker. In this book, (and in many cozy serial killer narratives) everyone but the serial killer upholds the expectations of their station in life. Traditional gender roles — from the detective (man) having to solve the case to the woman being more concerned about being thought of as a slut than whether the stranger who showed up on her aunt’s front porch with a knife might be out to kill her.
The chaos threatens the status quo, and by defeating the serial killer, they are allowed to go on with their normal lives — crises of having to face the unknown averted. This isn’t to say the characters are not changed by the serial killer — Fen and Alex flip the traditional “older man, younger woman” trope on its head — allowing a little bit of chaos into the social structure. But overall, the crises is averted and everyone is able to relax into their expected roles. Even Elaine is “given back her womanhood” in the end, so that she can assimilate into the non-chaotic structure of society again. Of course, in reality we know that she might try to fit and wouldn’t… that she would be a permanent crack in the status quo — but happily ever afters don’t leave room to explore the cracks in society’s foundation.
Besides the gender expectations and the moral roles, the other thing that upholds the status quo in this book is the killer’s final moments in which he raves at the doctor, calling. her a bitch and saying it should have been her. This feels so out of character for a world-renowned doctor. Maybe more out of character than the killing. In having the last scene be a “mask-reveal” where we see his “real inner thoughts”, the expectations that serial killers are crass and vulgar. They are “bad”, not just in their actions, but in their speech and mannerisms. They are visible. It gives the reader hope that agents of chaos can be rooted out and extracted from society.
I will say this type of book is probably very comforting for those who live by “normal” social expectations — it may also be more anxiety producing for those readers. For someone who identifies as genderqueer and bi, having everyone fulfill their socially expected gender roles was actually more anxiety producing than the threat of chaos. Which is probably why I love weird horror where chaos rules supreme.
The Chance to Succumb to Evil (Easily Shaken Off)
One gothic aspect of the serial killer trope is generally the mirroring of the hero and the killer. This book didn’t have much of that, and except for the cliffs near Fen’s house, I didn’t get much of a gothic vibe at all. However, at the end, there was a moment when both Brad and Vivi have to confront their desire to kill and question whether they are just as bad as the killer. First, when Brad is rescuing JC it is very clear that Brad could have killed the killer but instead chose to injure him instead, so he would face a trial. This is the upholding of the status quo again — vigilante justice is bad, the system will be fair, and our heroes put their faith in the system. Similarly, at the hospital, Vivi has a moment of crisis in which she doesn’t want to treat the man who almost killed her sister. Which… why would she have to at a large San Francisco hospital!?! She has a more clear inner conflict which she overcomes in a few moments and decides to treat him because she’s a doctor. Either of these moments of crises would have been more effective if there had been closer mirroring of the killer and either hero — that delicious trope in which the detective must understand the killer so much they risk becoming them. Instead, this was used more as a moment in which the main characters were faced with a “similar” situation and almost easily choose the right thing. It’s a cozy, “temptation is there, but good always wins” kinda spin on the mirrored moral crises.
However, neither moral crisis mattered because in the end no one had to depend on the system to serve justice — the killer dies of a heart attack. In a way this feels like divine intervention. Good will always win. Bad will fail. Nature wants it that way.
Reading this I realize it sounds like I hated this book. It’s not true. I found it enjoyable. I found it, at times, downright cozy. Ironically, there is something comforting in the status quo being upheld, good overcoming evil, and people finding love, even if it is part of a system in which I am not the status quo. I think it is a question of stability. Which is probably why there are so many books out there that follow similar tropes — we all need a little stability sometimes.
