Why, Brian Masters asks in this meditation on the nature of good and evil does life turn some people into saints and others into serial killers? He isn't the first to ask and he won't, presumably be the last but in this rambling and somewhat self-indulgent volume he doesn't come up with any convincing answers; worse, he sails dangerously close to tabloid voyeurism territory with his copious and often horrific accounts of the activities of Jeffrey Dahmer, Dennis Nilsen and others. Masters has written books on just about everything: Moliere and Camus, obscure duchesses, the Swinging Sixties. He has also produced full-length studies of three serial killers, of which this book, it seems to me, is a confused and confusing reworking.
