First published in 1990
Thickness: 320 pages
Read in dutch
Personal rating: 2 stars
In short
When our hero finds himself in the path of a serial killer, he somehow manages to defend himself, and give the blood-thirsty madman a taste of his own medicine. But when he goes through the dead man's wallet, he finds a mysterious personal ad inviting him to join a party hosted by Errol Flynn. What begins with passing curiosity soon becomes uncontrollable obsession, as our hero becomes acquainted with 18 killers. Their game: to share the thrill of the hunt and to make sure no two members choose the same two victims. To protect their identities, they have all chosen names of old Hollywood stars, and before long, our hero becomes Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. But he has no intention of following the rules. With a government special agent on his trail who will soon become his partner in crim, "Dougie" plans to knock off the killers one by one, from Carole Lombard to Chuck Norris, to Laurence Olivier and Cher. But what happens when the "stars" notice their numbers dropping? (www.goodreads.com)
My two cents
The Serial Killers Club has been finished in record time, although it wasn't because of its splendid content. More because it was an easy prose to read, especially after Pride & Prejudice. (And it was in Dutch, I truly read like a train in my native language, but I still prefer the original English text in most cases).
This book is like reading the gossip page in the news paper. No educational purpose or intellectual goal at all, but we all like to read those few glam pages.
Having been written so even 10y olds can read it without any problem, I kept on reading because I loved to know what kind of serial killings the members of the club have been doing. I'm intrigued by such things, and I'm sure I'm not the only one, if you see how many books, films, documentaries have been made on the subject. It is not biographical in any way.
It was sloppy, and in many cases major plot holes just got painted over and ignored. Not a novel I would invest time in if you ask me. I wouldn't if I had known beforehand, but what can you do?
Luckily it cost me only a day or three. The reason it got 2 stars. It got finished.
