Colin Wilson

With a new introduction by the author.

Colin Wilson's novel The Killer remains the yardstick by which English 'serial killer' fiction should be measured. This is not another example of the whipped curr of detective fiction that currently prevails but is a work created in the shadow of Ian Brady—another Northern boy gone bad—and still has the power of conviction to disturb. Wilson's central character, Arthur Lingard, exists at the extremes, caught between the reducing reality of life around him in Northern milltowns and the escape offered by the great pulp writers of imaginative fantasy (A Merritt, ER Burroughs, et cetera).

A contemporary of JG Ballard's Crash, Wilson's masterpiece was written at breakneck speed in the late 1960s. Age has not dimmed its power, but rather increased it. The Killer makes for uncomfortable reading, both in its challenging of the boundaries of crime fiction and for the unsettling heat of its obsessive sexuality. Its only equal in this sphere is Derek Raymond's I Was Dora Suarez.

Jacket design by John Coulthart.
Cover painting by Francis Bacon.

Download the first chapter: Chapter One (PDF file—512k)