SOURCE: "Murderer's Row," in The New York Times Book Review, February 25, 1996, p. 9.

In the following excerpt, Harrison compares The Hellfire Club to Dean Koontz's Intensity.

Pity the serial killer. He is now a cliché—killed this, slaughtered that. After The Collector, by John Fowles, Silence of the Lambs, by Thomas Harris, and The Alienist, by Caleb Carr—not to mention true-crime books about David (Son of Sam) Berkowitz, Ted Bundy and others—it is no longer sufficient for a serial killer to have clean fingernails and a filthy mind, to lick his lips as the knife flashes or to appear to be only a pleasant fellow dreamily wandering the aisles at the hardware store. So much replication throughout popular culture has left the serial killer downsized and in the midst of an identity crisis….

Where may we find insight into this tail-chasing, self-referential genre? Perhaps in The Hellfire...