By Reason of Insanity

At the center of this gripping epic novel of mass murder, pursuit, and psychological terror is Thomas Bishop, a psychotic young killer who believes he is the son of Caryl Chessman, who was executed for rape in California amid intense controversy. Subjected to unmerciful physical and mental torture from an early age, Bishop kills his mother at the age of 10 and is placed in an institution for the criminally insane. He grows to manhood knowing the outside world only through a television screen. At 25, he succeeds in a brilliant escape and change of identity and begins to move across the country, murdering women in particularly gruesome ways. Pursued by reporters, police, and the mob, Bishop manages to elude them all, and the search for him becomes the greatest manhunt in U.S. history. Stevens takes the reader on a harrowing descent into the mind of a mass murderer in this eerily realistic serial-killer novel. The chilling denouement will hold readers spellbound until the shattering, unforgettable conclusion.

Back in the '70s, when the term "serial killer" wasn't yet popular, Shane Stevens wrote this long, exquisitely detailed novel about a psychopathic murderer. Thomas Bishop escapes from an insane asylum at age 25 and begins what he fully intends to be a historic career as a multiple murderer. He is meticulous, intelligent, conscious of what he is doing, and utterly amoral. And we are inside his head, every step of the way--a welcome approach compared to contemporary works that focus on a detective or reporter protagonist. The New York Times called it "violent realism . . . extremely effective."