Letters to the Purple Satin Killer is an epistolary novel made up of letters addressed to a serial killer. Jonas Williker earned the nickname ‘The Purple Satin Killer’ from the fabric found with his victims, and now he’s in prison awaiting trial. Positioned as a true crime book printing these letters, the novel builds up a picture of the people writing him letters: from his mother to fans to businesses trying to make money to people trying to convert him.
The title, format, and comparisons with Bret Easton Ellis intrigued me. I wondered how the book would work, but you quickly work out that this is barely a book about Williker: it’s a range of stories about different people, with a subplot that reveals some of his crimes and life, and it’s about how true crime has become such a phenomenon and the ways this preys on people. As I’m not a fan of true crime, I probably missed some references and satirical elements, but I felt like there was plenty to get into regardless (and other details I liked—I hope that the character with the surname ‘Bennington’ is a Bret Easton Ellis reference). Many of the characters fall into archetypes, and it’s fun to see how these play out, particularly with female characters who become obsessed with him and where that actually goes for them.
I like how little this book ends up telling you about Williker, which feels like it critiques people’s need to know every detail about serial killers (and there’s an interesting way this is twisted by one of the victims’ mother near the end). I saw another review compare the book to Dennis Cooper’s The Sluts, which I think is a good comparison as another book that is a range of voices discussing a central figure you never really hear from. Most of what you know about Williker’s crimes (and indeed the actual gore and violence you might get from the book) is offhand or even imagined by the reader, but regardless there’s a tense, eerie atmosphere, especially as the book never gives the satisfaction of finding out from Williker what is or isn’t true.
This fresh take on a serial killer story and on the true crime satire genre offers a darkly funny take on the media culture around killers, feeling modern and yet hilariously everything is a letter or a postcard and the epistolary form is one of the oldest there is. Maybe it is best if you had a misspent youth reading a lot of Bret Easton Ellis and Chuck Palahniuk (like I did), but regardless, I had a good time with this book, and I love the creativity in ways authors satirise true crime these days.
Fiendfully Reading 
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