Signature Killers

Signature Killers is a peculiar yet valuable book--repetitious, brilliant, turgid, passionate, and indispensable for understanding serial killers. Those who persevere through the prolix writing style will be rewarded by compelling insights into the psychological needs, and evolution over time, of a specific type of murderer, one whose key characteristic is not so much that he kills multiple people, but that he leaves a signature behind at every crime scene. Robert Keppel knows what he's talking about: He's been involved in more than 2,000 murder investigations, including 50 high-profile serial cases. The topics he covers in exhaustive and harrowing detail (Signature Killers is not for the faint of heart) include "the essence of torture," "the anger-retaliation signature," "the picquerism signature," "the psychological imprint of a sadist," "the retaliation-to-excitation continuum," and why Jeffrey Dahmer is "the black hole at the end of the continuum."