Rating: 
Summary: Disturbing and Hard-Hitting
Review: This book grabs you right from the get-go, dropping you into the scene of the crime in a way unlike any I've read before: the "docufiction" approach merges the newsstories with a fictional re-enactment that immerses the reader in the reality of the murders in an intriguing way. This is what true crime fiction SHOULD do, but doesn't, because it's so repressed and interested in the lawful side of non-fiction. Here Jaffe expresses himself freely -- even as he is clearly writing in an objective manner, keeping the narrator out of the picture in each character study. 15 SERIAL KILLERS is a fascinating literary experiment even as it's a disturbing horrorshow, entering into the scene of the crime and the twisted methods and mentations of fifteen of the world's most notorious serial killers. Dahmer, Gacy, Bundy, Gein... they're all here for the party. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Will the true serial killer please stand up?
Review: True, Harold Jaffe trots out the familiar lineup of culturally certified serial killers, but, then, plopped in the center, is Henry Kissinger. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, along with his mentor and competitor, Richard Nixon, Kissinger is the real villain of Jaffe's remarkably subtle volume. Kissinger's licit murders--Vietnam, Cambodia, Chile, East Timor--are not merely overlooked, but applauded by the sheepish culture, even as the illicit individual serial killer, such as the impoverished, abused Aileen Wuornos, is sanctimoniously vilified. It is the capitalist culture that condemns in order to consume that is Jaffe's real target, and as usual his aim is unerring.
This volume is as revolutionary as it is courageous.
Rating:
Summary: Embrace the butcher
Review: Yet more serial killers, you ask? Well, yes and no. Sure, the usual suspects are mostly all there: Bundy, Wuornos, Dahmer, Gacy, the Night Stalker, the Unabomber, Speck, Son of Sam . . . But what is Henry Kissinger doing in that company, coming off, in Jaffe's version, as a serial mass murderer of entire countries, dwarfing any of the other official serial killers by comparison. As usual, Jaffe's writing is so sharp, his pitch perfect, the cadences so precise, that even the most graphic violence is transformed into a rare sort of poetry. With all the hoopla over the movie Monster, Jaffe's version of Aileen Wuornos is far and away superior in its complexity and, finally, compassion for the female "serial killer". Technically, 15 Serial Killers is a tour de force, but its profundity is more than technical; rather it's a combination of moral daring, passion, the keenest intelligence, and remarkably varied prose.
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