Why do murderers continue to fascinate? Why have works as varied as Norman Mailer's 'Executioner's Song,' Thomas Harris's 'Silence of the Lambs' and Truman Capote's 'In Cold Blood' enjoyed such popularity? Are there reasons besides lurid fascination for reading books like 'Killing for Company'? Masters, he has generated a 50-volume journal while in prison), the book is less a sensationalistic 'true crime' story than a chilling, psychological portrait of a murderer, a deeply disturbing voyage into the mind of a man who killed 15 times. Nilsen's own voluminous ruminations (in addition to his letters to Mr. The book not only became a best-seller there, but also won accolades from writers as varied as Beryl Bainbridge and P. Nilsen soon after his arrest, and published this study of the murderer in Britain in 1985. He was arrested in February 1983, when the plumbing in his building backed up and workmen discovered that the pipes were clogged with human flesh.īrian Masters, the author of several studies of French literature, began corresponding with Mr.

He buried the corpses beneath the floorboards of his apartment later, he hacked the bodies to bits and either burned them in the backyard or flushed them down the toilet. The crimes were grotesque, and eerily similar to the grisly deeds committed by Jeffrey Dahmer: between the years 19, a British civil servant named Dennis Nilsen lured 15 men to his apartment in north London and strangled them while they slept. Killing for Company The Story of a Man Addicted to Murder By Brian Masters Illustrated.

Killing for Company by Brian Masters