Better than your average "True Life Crimes" book . . .
Disadvantages:
Gets somewhat carried away with itself towards the end . . .
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
Over the course of four years Denis Nilsen killed 15 people, then in the majority of cases he chopped them up and either flushed bits down the loo, boiled them or burnt them. They caught him when the drains got choked up with human remains and he was eventually found guilty of six murders and two attempted murders. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum recommendation of serving 25 years.
So what else does one need to know about one of the most gruesome murderers in recent British history? Personally I am inclined to leave this tale right there, but for reasons too boring to go into a copy of “Killing for Company” somewhat surprisingly found its way into my house. I read most books that make it past my front door and this would be no exception. However, hopes were not running high.
In the preface to this work Masters explains to the reader his relationship with Nilsen, which was claimed to be that of confidant. As neither a lawyer nor a psychiatrist, Masters had a relationship with Nilsen which stood outside the norm because for the murderer this man represented perhaps the ONLY way in which his “side” of the gruesome tale could be fairly committed to the public.
I was sceptical about this initially, but by the end of the work I had understood that during and after the trial Nilsen had a compulsion to analyse himself and his own motives. As such, like several high profile murderers before him Nilsen became verbose about himself and his possible motivations and Masters was there to catch his random thoughts as they tumbled out of his confused mind.
We start the book on the day of the arrest, and with big piles of gore. There are severed bodies in the wardrobe, there are carrier bags of internal organs and half-boiled heads….oh and there are rotting pieces of flesh down the drains. There is GORE. If you don’t want gore then you don’t really want to read this chapter. However, I think it is very important to add something here: namely that because the acts are so heinous and the gore so thoroughly gory there is absolutely no need for Masters to sensationalise the gory truth. So he doesn’t. This leads to a more than credible read.
We will be walked through Nilsen’s rather cold childhood and the significant death of his grandfather, then through his army career and his first tentative (and unrequited) love of a fellow cadet that saw his homosexual preferences taking shape. Nilsen left the army hoping that the police force would offer the same comradeship but his time there was rather unfulfilling and he left after a year of so to work for the civil service, placing low paid workers in positions in the hotel trade.
Nilsen was a hard worker who bordered on the obsessive with his championing of the underdog and union activities. Yet he was extremely lonely and unfulfilled and somehow this was eventually to tip over into a drunken rendezvous with a lonesome vagrant that culminated in his death by strangulation.
The first murder was soon followed by another and another, all following a similar pattern. Nilsen would strike up a new friendship with a homeless or poor (usually) homosexual younger man in a bar, he would buy him drinks until they both stumbled back to his house and there he would usually wait until his new “friend” was either asleep or comatose through alcohol before strangling him with a tie or a piece of string. Having ensured that the man was indeed now dead Nilsen would generally wash the body and then perhaps look at it in a mirror, and maybe hug it and sleep with it through the night. It seems that sex wasn’t really a motivating factor for him.
Far more incredible than the acts of murder he committed was the apparent blasé way in which he would then prise up some floorboards and deposit the body under them for weeks at a time before bringing them back up to be butchered until one of his “domestic fires” in the back garden could see off the stinking remains.
So Masters has successfully taken us through the first seven chapters in a way that has been factual without being sensational and for me I was drawn into this intriguing world without much thought for the writing style because it was concise, simple and undramatic throughout.
However, “Killing For Company” then turns it’s attentions to the trial of Nilsen and a final (but long) chapter simply entitled “Answers”. Having enjoyed the read so far my attention and general suspension of disbelief took a nose-dive. The trial did bring up some interesting questions, mostly about the divided worlds of law and psychiatry and how they can ever hope to speak meaningfully together about the complexity of the human mind. You see the fact that Nilsen was guilty of murder was not in dispute. It was only because Nilsen had hummm, shall I dare to say “spilled his guts..?!” about their murders that any of these vagrants who had lived on the very edges of society had even been missed. No, the trial was about whether he was a cold-blooded murderer or if he “knew not what he did.”
This should be interesting stuff but I just found that Masters had his own theory about just about every aspect of the tale in the courtroom and that his attempt to play both faux-barrister and pseudo-psychiatrist were intrusive to the facts of the case and plain irritating in their desire to jump up and say “look at me, aren’t I CLEVER!” This sudden introduction of the child at the front of the class with their hand held painfully high for attention is carried on and made more extreme in the final “Answers” chapter.
This book retails for £6.99 but discounts abound on the net. Use the ISBN number 0-09-955261-2 and you are sure to find a bargain. I have the 1985 Arrow Books paperback with a rather poor picture of Nilsen looking through some railings with the sun reflecting off his glasses on the front cover.
Overall “Killing for Company” makes for an interesting read. This is partly because Nilsen has so much to say for himself during and after the trial and because he is undeniably one of the most “interesting” mass murderers of recent years. This is simply because his motivation was, and still is, far from clear.
However, it is also a book I would recommend because Masters writes in a simple and concise style, at least whilst relaying the factual events. In my opinion this is let down by the final analysis which rather runs away with itself. Of course, compared to most of those awful “True Life CRIMES” style books that this must sit with on the shelves it is simply in a different league.
*** Three stars from me but hey, three stars is a good rating, right?!
Thanks for reading.
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No, never
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