Kicking off my descent into the serial killer genre, I picked up Crushing Snails by Emma E. Murray. Honestly, it may have been the wrong choice to go first because now I’m not sure how I’m going to find other books that live up to it. This book was absolutely crushing. I’ve been obsessed with the cover since I first saw it, but as gorgeous and grotesque as those snails are, the contents of the books are better. Or worse, depending on your point of view.

The story beats a drum of inevitability. From the beginning you know what’s going to happen. You know the how and the why. You just don’t know the when and the where. Murray manages to make each chapter twist a little bit tighter, a bit like thumbscrews. Even at the end, there’s no release. Just more tightening. And yet, it feels complete. And… once again, inevitable. There’s a certain amount of emotion, maybe even sympathy, without getting sentimental, and so it feels very raw and real.

Also, there are layers. Yes, it’s an onion book. And everyone loves onions.

But enough gushing. I’m supposed to be reading these books to look at where the contemporary serial killer novel sits in the shared imagination. To do so, I’m going to have to give a lot of spoilers about the books I’m reading. If you plan to read Crushing Snails and don’t want spoilers, I’d recommend stopping here. Otherwise, expand the box below for my thoughts on the book.

The first thing I knew I’d want to talk about is gender and the modern serial killer. In most books I’ve read (not that I’ve read a LOT of serial killer books), the serial killer is a man. I think my introduction was Red Dragon and then I read Child 44. But most of the really popular serial killer books I can think of have male serial killers.

• The Dexter Series
• American Psycho
• Intensity
• The Bone Collector
• The Wasp Factory
• Perfume

The list goes on, and expands when you add in all of the books that are based on real life serial killers. One reason for this is probably that male serial killers are much more common than female serial killers and, in general, male serial killers tend to be more likely to kill strangers while women are more likely to kill people they know and care for. This makes it more likely that male serial killers will become part of the public imagination through drawn-out news stories while female serial killers will often only get a brief period of publicity when they are caught.

Another reason for all the male serial killers is likely all the male writers. When men dominated the action and suspense genres, it makes sense that most of the serial killers and the heroes were men.

But lately, there’s been an uptick in women writing serial killers as well as women featured as serial killers. Even though women serial killers have not become more prevalent, more women have jumped into writing the genre (and those who are already in the genre are becoming more popular). And women seem more likely to write women serial killers. Off the top of my head, I can think of:

• My Sister the Serial Killer
• Sharp Objects
• Crushing Snails

All three of these were written by women and feature women (and generally young) serial killers. I have my theories as to why young female serial killers are so compelling. Mostly, it comes down to the juxtaposition of the femme ranging from “harmless” to “nurturing” and the serial killer genre flipping that concept on its head. Second, I think that because women have this feeling of harmlessness about them, it’s easier to write a sympathetic novel about a woman serial killer. So when an author wants to write from the POV of a serial killer, a female makes more sense as a “like-able” serial killer. Finally, there’s definitely been an uptick in the “revenge” novels, where female rage is acted out through serial killers.

To be clear, these are all thoughts I had before I started this journey. I am wondering what will be confirmed and what new surprises I will find along the way.

Which brings me to Crushing Snails. The book starts with a turning point in 12-year-old Winnie’s life. Her mentally ill mother turns violent during a paranoid-delusion and badly burns Winnie. Her father, not wanting to lose his wife, doesn’t even want to take Winnie to the hospital. After Winnie’s mother is committed, Winnie’s father becomes a severe alcoholic who blames Winnie for her mother being taken away. Winnie becomes the stand-in housewife, in charge of cooking, cleaning, and taking care of her younger sister, and the family scapegoat. Her father regularly “punishes” her with some horrific forms of abuse. Her older brother seems to sometimes feel bad about it, but also recognizes that he benefits from it and so never steps in. Her little sister learns that she can manipulate her father’s favor and control Winnie.

All of this sounds like a sympathetic setup for how Winnie becomes a serial killer. And yet it somehow isn’t a sympathetic book. While reading, I pitied Winnie. I hated her life. But the voice manages to remain just surface level enough that it doesn’t garner sympathy. We don’t get Winnie dwelling on how bad her life is. We don’t even get her wishing for something else. We get a sort of acceptance and, as I said earlier, inevitability. In a lot of ways the book feels less like a character study and more like a dissection. It isn’t about emotion — it’s about cutting open and displaying a situation from every angle — which fits Winnie’s and Gabe’s obsession with dissection throughout the book. At times I felt like I was in science class, taking apart the childhood of a serial killer: if you move the abuse to the side, you will get a clear view of her mental health issues. Next we’ll look at the guilt and shame systems…

In the course of the dissection, these are the themes that stood out to me:

Inevitability

Early in the book, we get a police interview with Gabe, in which we learn that something terrible has happened and Winnie is missing. Because of the back cover, we know Winnie’s a budding serial killer. (Otherwise, there might have been a bit more tension regarding the possibility of something having happened to her). These two pieces of information make it pretty clear that Winnie is going to go through with at least one kill of a human being. There are still some questions of who she killed, but knowing that she’s going to kill someone makes each chapter tense with the question of “is it them?” and “is it now?”

Despite the reader knowing what’s coming, there’s still a small hope in most scenes that it’s not now. It’s not them. Maybe she’ll make it another day. Maybe she’ll let this person go. Until she doesn’t. I think it’s around her second kill that the theme of inevitability starts being brought up by other characters, most obviously by her father. What looked like him blaming Winnie for her mother’s incarceration and eventual death starts to stretch back further, with hints that he thought she was never any good — that she had always pushed her mother. Then, once Winnie’s gone, it comes out that the father thought she was pretty much born evil.

The reader, however, is given glimpses of several off-ramps of this inevitability. If Winnie’s father hadn’t blamed her. If he had blamed her but not abused her. If he had given her to her grandmother when her grandmother offered to take her in. If Gabe was a little nicer and didn’t encourage her murderous thoughts. If her brother had stuck up for her instead of taking advantage of the situation. If Krystal had reached out more. Had told her parents about the abuse. I think it’s all of these paths towards safety that ratchet the tension in the book. Because it’s not as simple as nature — Winnie wasn’t born evil. And it’s not as brushed over as the nurture in most serial killer books — where one or two instances of abuse imply an entire childhood that is then swept away for the “meat” of the story. Crushing Snails paints every brushstroke that pushes Winnie towards a fate that is only inevitable because it has already happened.

Mental Health

I suppose we can agree that serial killers usually have some form of mental illness. Well adjusted, mentally well people don’t murder several people over a course of months and years. However, I appreciated the nuance to the mental health issues Winnie was facing.

At the beginning of the book, we see Winnie’s mother having a psychotic break. I suppose as a reader, this should have been a hint that Winnie might share her mother’s delusions. But throughout the first three-quarters of the book, Winnie seems quite logical and sane. She has some anger issues, which can be expected due to her constant abuse and feelings of helplessness and inadequacy. After her first kill, she begins experiencing guilt that wrecks her sleep and makes her a bit unstable. But wouldn’t anyone react to killing a baby that way? Especially as she tries to explain it to herself as an accident.

At that point her mental state is unravelling, and yet it feels completely within the realms of sanity. Even her obsession with Leigh feels logical. Of course with all the abuse, she latches onto a small version of herself as “what could have been.”

Once we get to her thinking of killing Leigh, we start to see the insanity poking through. A sane person wouldn’t believe they need to kill a child to somehow take back their life. But still, that can be blamed on the dark conversations she has with Gabe. It almost (almost) seems reasonable when he’s talking about a school shooting for her to come back with a big, bad deed of her own.

In fact, Winnie’s sanity was so finely held together that when she has the breakdown at her mother’s grave, hearing her mother’s voice, that still feels almost reasonable. Of course a girl who’s been told she caused her mother’s death will hear her mother blaming her. Of course she would tear at the dirt of the grave in grief and guilt. Makes total sense.

Then, after Leigh’s death, Winnie has a mental breakdown and experiences a hallucination that is so beautifully written it’s hard to tell if it’s just a daydream or a full on delusion. It’s only towards the end, when Winnie’s coming out of the delusion in a different room, dressed and hours later, that the reader starts to connect the delusion back to the mother’s actions. Things unravel backwards and you wonder when Winnie drifted into the realm of insanity. Because no, killing Leigh wasn’t sane. Stalking her wasn’t sane. Killing Nikolai wasn’t sane. Killing the dog wasn’t sane. Even the snails… as small and insignificant as they may be, were not sane. Logic and lucidity don’t always mean sane.

I really appreciated this approach to the mental health of the serial killer — as worsening symptoms over time. The reader can see what her future holds, partially because of what we saw her mother going through, but also because of the building blocks that work like legos to build future “voices” in her head. I believe that Winnie will go on to kill more young girls, mostly hearing the voice of her mother telling her it’s the only way to get the life she deserves. Setting up that “adult serial killer” in the adolescent moments, was very well crafted.

POV of the Victim

I feel like traditional serial killer books most often took the point of view of the detective working the case or some other hero trying to stop the killer. Which makes sense in thrillers where people want someone they can root for and a somewhat happy (or at least just) ending. Sometimes there’d be chapters from the killer’s POV interspersed throughout the book, but they were generally vague, often incoherent, alluding to the chaotic insanity of the serial killers while giving hints to their locations and identities.

But somewhere along the line, books started exploring more of the serial killer’s POV. Sure, The Killer Inside Me came out in 1952, but the POV of the serial killer didn’t really come into fashion until the mid-nineties or early 2000s. Now, I’d say you’re just as likely to get a book from the detective’s POV as you are the killer’s, maybe with more leaning towards the killer or their close family. Of course, that could be my prejudice as my reading has switched from thrillers to horror.

Still, what you don’t often get is a great POV of the victim. Most of the books I’ve read had no victim POV. It makes sense. How can you tell a coherent book about multiple murders when the narrators keep dying? But it still feels a little inappropriate that the victims are used only as plot points for either the hero or killer’s story. Since watching Woman of the Hour I’ve wanted more of the victim’s POV, and Crushing Snails delivered.

The book switches to two of the victim’s views in the chapter where they are killed. Neither of these chapters feel cheap or like they’re just there as a gratuitous nod to the victim. Instead (and especially in Leigh’s chapter) we get a deep immersion in their voice. In the moments before the character dies, we get to feel the vibrancy of their life in a very three-dimensional sort of way. It was heartbreaking and also refreshing.

No Likeable Characters

I feel like in older serial killer books, there was always someone to root for. Of course you weren’t meant to like the killer, but you could like the detective. Or if he was a bit too gruff, you could like the psychologist. Or if she was a total bitch, you could like one of the victims. Or their mother. There was always someone to root for. Crushing Snails did not have anyone to root for. The one likeable character was Leigh, but knowing what would probably happen to her, it was hard to root for her. Furthermore, as she was a child, it didn’t have the same “hopefulness” that a hero-type of character would have.

Instead of likeable characters, Crushing Snails gave us varying degrees of horrible, which might be allowed because it’s in the horror genre, but I think there’s also a willingness today to view everyone as flawed and not have to offer the relief of a morally good character.

Masculinity Surrounding the Female Killer

In a book about a female serial killer, you wouldn’t think I’d be thinking long and hard about masculinity. Perhaps it’s just because Adolescence is still on my mind. But it also makes sense that when most male serial killers have “mommy issues”, a female serial killer could be heavily influenced by the masculinity that surrounds her in her adolescent years.

One thing I’m sort of glad for was that Winnie’s abuse didn’t include sexual abuse. While I think it would have been fully realistic, I also think the depths of sexual abuse could have distracted from other aspects of the story. That being said, I think as a woman reader, there was a constant fear of sexual abuse. Everywhere Winnie turned there were chances for it to happen to her — her father having her strip for her punishments. Rough men at the clubs. Walking along the street and seeing prostitutes. I don’t think it was an undercurrent I was imagining. The worry was constantly there, and even though it doesn’t happen on page, it doesn’t quite feel like Winnie escapes it, either. There’s this animosity of men being bigger and stronger than her while at the same time she wants to be desirable and loved when all she’s known is pain at the hands of men.

The father blaming Winnie for the death of her mother is a high catalyst for her change. Not just the abuse he doles out because of it, but also the guilt he pushes onto her. But the thing is, there are hints that Cole always resented his children for taking his wife away from him. He opines about how happy they were before she had children, and how having children took her away. It’s quite possible that pregnancy set off her mental health issues and that’s what he was referring to. But it seems more like he was jealous that the children took her attention away from him. He not only didn’t want the responsibility of children, but he couldn’t even handle the competition of having children. When the mother is taken away, he doesn’t step up into the parent role. Instead he forces Winnie to become a surrogate mother. In many ways, I am guessing the mother was a surrogate mother to the father as well, not a partner, but someone to take care of him.

The other strong male influence in the book is Brandon, the older brother. There are a few times he could stand up for Winnie. Or he could go to the authorities. Help her in some way. But it seems clear that, although he feels a bit guilty about the situation, he still can’t imagine giving up Winnie as his caretaker and will press the situation to his advantage, refusing to help in any way.

Gabe is the final large male roll. As a friend of Winnie’s you’d think he’d be a little better than the other men. But while he’s willing to help her hide the body, he’s also hot and cold with Winnie, keeping an emotional distance for the sake of his “cool guy” facade. At the beginning of the book Winnie is desperate for his approval and attention, perhaps because he’s the only guy who gives her positive attention. But he almost seems to toy with her, often blowing her off for his dates or just because. That distance reinforces the emotional immaturity of the men in Winnie’s life.

In this way, masculinity is represented by either fear and pain or incompetence and a sense of entitlement. So it makes sense that Winnie wants to regain some sense of control and power. I think in some ways this book almost tipped into the revenge fantasy genre — although Winnie didn’t kill the men around her, there was a sense that what she was doing happened because of a snapping point of not being able to put up with male infantilism.

That’s all I have to say for now, but I’d love to discuss the book further. I also can’t wait to dive into my next read. I think I may try an older novel. I’m leaning towards The Killer In Me. But we’ll see once the emotions of Crushing Snails has settled.