The FBI had been using the term serial killer since 1961, and books about psychotic killers have a long history, dating back at least to Robert Bloch’s Psycho in 1959. In 1970, Lawrance Holmes’s novel A Very Short Walk introduced us to a killer narrating the story of his own murderous alienation, starting as an angry fetus stewing in amniotic rage juice. Judith Rossner’s 1975 novel Looking for Mr. Goodbar, about a woman who picks up a stranger in a bar and gets murdered for her trouble, was a cultural touchstone that inspired a million magazine think pieces. But 1981 was the dawn of something
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