One of the obvious concerns of Meeting Evil is the novel's attempt to deal with the apparently random violence that has afflicted American society in the 1980s and 1990s. In the novel, John Felton, a young married man and real estate agent, naively helps a man who stops at his house and requests a push for his car. When John accompanies Richie to a gas station and becomes embroiled in a series of bizarre incidents, he finally comes to realize that he has become entangled with a serial killer.

Another social interest of the novel is Berger's attempt to explore the character and effect on a community of a serial killer on a spree. Richie Maranville, the murderer, seems at first an innocuous and almost anonymous figure, yet he is eventually revealed as a murderer who has cut the throats of two women because of trivial...