In this classic study, Elliott Leyton challenges the conventional idea of serial murderers as deranged madmen. He explores the twisted – but comprehensible – motives of a half-dozen notorious killers: Edmund Emil Kemper, Theodore Robert Bundy, Albert DeSalvo (“The Boston Strangler”), David Richard Berkowitz (“Son of Sam”), Mark James Robert Essex, and Charles Starkweather. In the process of describing their crimes Leyton exposes the cold rationality that underlies their apparent pointlessness. The result is startling: a revelatory text on a deeply troubling topic.