I completely forgot about this until recently….

Many, many years ago, at the height of I Hunt Killers, I was asked by my publisher if I would consider writing a non-fiction book about serial killers for the YA market. This seemed like an absolutely fascinating challenge to me, so we kept talking about it.

For reasons I no longer remember (I think it was mostly to do with deadlines), this project never came to fruition. But I did find on my hard drive a sample introduction I’d written for the theoretical book. I can’t remember if I ever showed this to anyone or if I just did it to see if I could. In either event, here it is!

This is a book about serial killers.

“No kidding,” you say. “It says that on the cover.”

OK, OK. Fine. But this book is a little different from other books you may have seen or read about serial killers.

For one thing, everything in this book is real. There are roughly a bajillion books out there about serial killers that are made-up (I’ve even written a couple of them), but everything in this book is true. It’s like a horror story, only it’s worse than that because everything in here actually happened to someone.

Most of the time, the people these things happened to were young. Right around your age, in some cases. Serial killers usually like easy victims, and for a grown man, a teenager or other young adult is easy pickings.

I know what you’re thinking: “Not me. If some serial killer pervert came after me, I would kick his ass so hard, he wouldn’t be able to crap for a week.”

I believe you.

But here’s the thing: Serial killers aren’t always obvious. They’re not like in the movies or on TV, where you can always tell something is “off” about them. Sometimes that happens, sure, but think about it — have you ever seen a story about a lunatic on TV and they interview the guy’s next door neighbor? Sure you have. What’s the one thing that neighbor always says?

“He was such a quiet guy.”

“I had no idea.”

“I never imagined in a million years he could do those things.”

Something like that, right?

Something like that.

Serial killers all too often look just like you and me. (Well, they look like me, at least — most of them are white guys in their thirties and forties. If you bumped into me on the street, you wouldn’t think I was planning on killing you. But I could be.) They blend in and they seem perfectly normal. Some of them seem totally helpless and harmless.

And by the time you realize they aren’t… Well, it’s too late. You’re another statistic.

So, yeah, this is a book about serial killers. We’re going to meet some of them. We’re going to try to figure out a little bit of what makes them tick. We’re going to meet the people who hunt them, and the people who study them.

But you know something?

No matter how much we do together, you and I, I don’t think we’re ever going to understand them.

Go ahead. Turn the page. There won’t be any blood.

Not for a little while, at least.

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