Category Archives: Book Review Blog

My book reviews and fun bookish news as a book blogger. All about other people’s books, and not my own. :-)

Review | The Devil’s Cinema, Steve Lillebuen

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Meet Mark Twitchell. Film maker, Star Wars geek… and a Dexter-obsessed killer. Steve Lillebuen’s The Devil’s Cinema is an absolute page-turner. We begin the book already with an idea of how the story ends. Or, if, like me, you didn’t know about Mark Twitchell, it should be easy enough to google his story. Yet reading The Devil’s Cinema was like reading a really action-packed thriller. I got sucked into Twitchell’s story, the horror of his kill room, the details of his film making dreams, and, above all, the excitement of police officers are they methodically find evidence to build their case.

I recently told someone about all the evidence against Twitchell, most notably the diary where he wrote S.K. Confessions (S.K. stands for serial killer, and is also a nice nod to writer Stephen King) and pretty much recorded all the details of his crime, making only minor changes to the names. When I later mentioned that this was a true story, the person I was talking to looked startled. She admitted that, the whole time she thought it was fiction, she kept thinking the writer was being lazy — how convenient would it be for the murderer to have written everything down? Yet it happened, and in another particularly interesting piece of evidence, Twitchell even left behind a sticky note with a Things to Do list, which included “kill room clean sweep.” One of the detectives on the case even admitted he was 50/50 on Twitchell as a viable suspect — the methodical mind who plotted the murder in S.K. Confessions could not be the same person who left behind so much evidence. That poor detective is teased for his 50/50 remark to this day. Seriously — you can’t make this up.

Part of the reason Twitchell’s story was so enthralling is that it hits so close to home. By all accounts, Twitchell seemed like a nice, harmless, geeky fanboy. He got giddy over winning costume competitions, and he dreamed about completing a 3D Star Wars fan film on a small budget. He does have his non-murderous dark side — he cheats on his wife and lies about having a full-time job. In fact, he has a chronic tendency to lie, even when there’s no need to. Lillebuen is fantastic at forming a complex, multi-faceted portrait, and you can almost feel like you know Twitchell.

I was creeped out that Twitchell used plentyoffish.com to lure his targets. He posed as a young woman and targeted single men. Have you ever tried online dating? Perhaps even at Plenty of Fish? It’s a free online dating site, perfect for people who want to try online dating out without having to pay eHarmony fees. Here’s the lesson: if someone you meet online wants to meet you at their garage — they won’t give you the street address, they tell you to take a circuitous route and park in the nearby woods and enter through the back door — don’t. Seriously creepy.

Lillebuen is a great storyteller, and I love that the book read more like a novel than a journalistic report. Lillebuen includes dialogue that sounds real, and in fact, he claims that they’re all as close to the original dialogue as actual witnesses remember. I also love how much of the material came from the Internet, with Twitchell’s Facebook updates and messages. His email exchanges with an American woman, Twitchell using a fake Dexter Morgan account, are chilling. The woman sounds like she really understands Twitchell and his fantasies, which is creepy on one hand, yet on the other hand, also sad when she distances herself from him later on.

Despite Lillebuen’s insistence that he wants to give a lot of attention to the victim’s life, it’s really Twitchell’s character who shines here — Lillebuen presents a very human side to a murderer. Lillebuen is far from sympathetic towards Twitchell, but his relating of all the facts does humanize him, and make him real. In a weird way, Twitchell’s humanity makes his crime even more chilling. When Twitchell admits to his wife that he can’t feel empathy, when Twitchell himself realizes he meets all the checkbox characteristics of psychopathy, you almost feel sympathy, until you realize that despite his realization, he feels no strong compulsion to seek help.

When we think of serial killers, we imagine truly horrific, larger than life, monstrous figures whose minds we can’t even begin to understand. However, the Twitchell revealed in Devil’s Cinema appears a sad, almost pathetic, figure. He may dream of being the super efficient, Dexter Morgan-level serial killer in S.K. Confessions, but he just couldn’t pull it off as he’d planned. And his career, however horrific his crime, was cut off pretty quickly. His crime is monstrous, yet, given the level of his ambition, he failed as a monster. Devil’s Cinema humanizes Twitchell even as it deflates him — he is, ultimately, just a man.

Review | The Sausage Maker’s Daughters, A.G.S. Johnson

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Don’t let the cover fool you. Or the book description that begins with “It’s the end of counterculture and Vietnam. Women’s consciousness is being raised and they’re beginning to find their places outside of the home.” Far from the slow-moving, politically charged literary fiction I expected, A.G.S. Johnson’s The Sausage Maker’s Daughters is a family drama and legal thriller. Kip Czermanski has been arrested for the murder of her brother-in-law, an ex-lover whose body was discovered naked in her bed. She has no memory of what happened, and her family, owners of the Czermanski sausage empire (and therefore socially and politically powerful in her hometown) is more concerned about protecting the family name than in ensuring Kip’s well-being.

The murder case presents an interesting mystery — did Kip really kill her brother-in-law? Because she herself doesn’t remember what happened, we learn the truth along with her, through bits and pieces of evidence the prosecution uncovers. But the really fascinating part of the story is Kip’s family. The youngest of four girls, Kip can’t wait to leave her hometown with its repressive small-town mentality. Her mother died at a young age, the eldest daughter Sarah ran away to join a convent, second sister Sybel faced undue pressure to be the “mother” of the household, and third sister Samantha was left to play peacemaker between Sybel and the rebellious Kip. I know we were meant to feel sorry for Kip, but I felt even more sympathetic for Sybel and Samantha, who seemed to feel more strongly the responsibilities for the family. I enjoyed reading about the Czermanski family dynamic, and I loved that the family saga was told within the framework of a courtroom drama.

The writing falters somewhat whenever Johnson injects politics into the story. Often, despite the date markers citing the present day setting as the 1970s, I would forget that the story was indeed set in a different time. But once in a while, as if to remind us about the political background of the era, Johnson has her characters talking about the feminist movement or women’s rights, and the dialogue just sounds more written than spoken. Characters like Kip’s lawyer Phil sometimes sounded like didactic mouthpieces. Certainly, feminism is an important issue, but I wish the rhetoric had been more seamlessly integrated into the storytelling.

Similarly, when it came to really emotionally charged scenes, the dialogue felt stilted. I actually enjoyed some of the more melodramatic conversations. But, for example, in a particularly emotional confrontation among the Czermanski sisters, some of the lines just sounded like they were put there to narrate background information rather than express real emotion.

That being said, the story really takes off once the trial begins, and we get into the truth about the killing. The legal battles are fascinating, and I loved watching Phil’s legal strategies to keep the prosecution off balance. Kip is a sympathetic protagonist, though with too large of a chip on her shoulder to be really likable. Phil, both intelligent and brutally honest, is probably my favourite character; Phil’s ability to call Kip on her prejudices are definitely points in Phil’s favour. The book cover promises an ending that we don’t see coming. To be honest, I was more interested in Kip’s family drama and Phil’s legal maneuvers than in the identity of the murderer. That being said, the ending did take me by surprise, and I found it more sad than shocking.

Review | Why Men Lie, Linden MacIntyre

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Why do men lie? After several failed relationships, Effie MacAskill Gillis believes she knows, at least until she runs into an old friend JC Campbell and risks getting into a romantic relationship again. Linden MacIntyre’s Why Men Lie doesn’t really provide a definitive answer to the question; rather, the feeling one gets after reading the novel is that everyone lies, and usually for no really good reason. If you’ve read The Bishop’s Man, you may recognize Effie as the sister of Bishop’s Man protagonist Father Duncan. In Why Men Lie, Duncan is still disillusioned with the Catholic church, and lives in a homeless shelter to help the residents.

Why Men Lie is a bit of a downer. Despite Effie’s confidence that her experience has shielded her from future hurt, she is unable to see the extent of JC’s temper issue. We get a glimpse into her troubled childhood, as well as her previous romantic relationships, where, at various moments, she could identify with Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. I loved that description, yet also felt somewhat let down by it. For someone so reluctant to trust, Effie herself doesn’t seem trustworthy, and it’s precisely the reality of that moral ambiguity that MacIntyre emphasizes. We are presented with a deeply flawed, sympathetic character in Effie, which makes it all the more tragic when you realize that the men in her life — JC and Duncan, for example — are both hiding things from her. She is extremely guarded and suspicious, yet it appears she has every reason to be. There’s a sinking feeling throughout that this story isn’t headed toward a happy ending.

Why do men lie? Many reasons, and we learn that women are hardly exempt from dishonesty either. MacIntyre is less interested in the reasons behind lying than in the way men and women mature — according to one character, men are more likely to remain unchanged than woman are. Why is JC obsessed with an American death row inmate, and are his physical altercations indicative of a bad temper or merely rotten timing? And how far back do JC’s deceptions actually go? Why Men Lie is about growing old; it’s about reflecting on one’s past and realizing that you now view these events differently. It’s about coming to terms with one’s past and trying to give a sense of purpose to the rest of one’s life.

I can imagine Why Men Lie making the literary prize shortlists. It’s well-written, complex and with characters so real that you can imagine them living next door. Personally, it didn’t blow me away. I felt for the characters, but didn’t really feel invested in the story or compelled to keep turning the pages. I found it a slow read, which I normally don’t mind, but in this case, I kept wishing for a bit of humour, or at the very least, a quirky character trait, to break the mood. Still, like I said, it’s a well-written story, and if you liked Bishop’s Man, you’ll love seeing how these characters’ lives turn out.