The Nightrunners by Joe R Lansdale (1987) Not so much a man as a force of nature, he haunts “the kid”, the book’s protagonist, over a period of the early years of the American west, with “War is god” as his motto.Ĥ. Though Anton Chigurh of No Country for Old Men is generally considered to be McCarthy’s supreme bogeyman, the huge, hairless and horrifying Judge Holden, who leads a band of renegade scalp hunters, is equally unpredictable and dangerous. She’s insane, she’s murderous, and she’s utterly implacable.Īnthony Perkins as Norman Bates in the shower scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s film version of Psycho. The Woman in Black by Susan Hill (1983)ĭeranged killers don’t have to be alive to wreak havoc, as shown by Hill’s terrifying spectre, who avenges herself on innocent children.

The great-grandfather of them all, with Norman Bates and his “Mother” creating the template for generations of slashers to come.Ģ. Below I’ve listed 10 of my favourite novels in this unsettling sub-genre, in the hopes that you might find what illumination such hellfire offers.

It was both a challenge and a joy to continue the story of the most famous of all deranged killers in fiction.īut demented killers come in many varieties, not just the Norman type.

As a result, he has become iconic, representing the madness that may reside in the most seemingly “normal” person, the soft voice that whispers in our ear: “We’re none of us as sane as we pretend.” I was privileged to carry on the career of the frightening yet empathetic Norman when I wrote Psycho: Sanitarium, the immediate sequel to Bloch’s Psycho.

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