ShelfLook
Tools About
Cover of The Serial Killer Files

How long does it take to read The Serial Killer Files?

the who, what, where, how, and why of the world's most terrifying murderers

Harold Schechter

The Serial Killer Files by Harold Schechter takes about 7 hours 50 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

About 7 hours 50 minutes

A weekend read

First published 2003. 427 pages, about 117,425 words.

16 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 13 hours 3 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 7 hours 50 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 4 hours 54 minutes

The page count is the median across 3 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

THE DEFINITIVE DOSSIER ON HISTORY'S MOST HEINOUS!Hollywood's make-believe maniacs like Jason, Freddy, and Hannibal Lecter can't hold a candle to real life monsters like John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and scores of others who have terrorized, tortured, and terminated their way across civilization throughout the ages. Now, from the much-acclaimed author of Deviant, Deranged, and Depraved, comes the ultimate resource on the serial killer phenomenon.Rigorously researched and packed with the most terrifying, up-to-date information, this innovative and highly compelling compendium covers every aspect of multiple murderers--from psychology to cinema, fetishism to fan clubs, "trophies" to trading cards. Discover:WHO THEY ARE: Those featured include Ed Gein, the homicidal mama's boy who inspired fiction's most famous Psycho, Norman Bates; Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi, sex-crazed killer cousins better known as the Hillside Stranglers; and the Beanes, a fifteenth-century cave-dwelling clan with an insatiable appetite for human fleshHOW THEY KILL: They shoot, stab, and strangle. Butcher, bludgeon, and burn. Drown, dismember, and devour . . . and other methods of massacre too many and monstrous to mention here.WHY THEY DO IT: For pleasure and for profit. For celebrity and for "companionship." For the devil and for dinner. For the thrill of it, for the hell of it, and because "such men are monsters, who live . . . beyond the frontiers of madness."PLUS: in-depth case studies, classic killers' nicknames, definitions of every kind of deviance and derangement, and much, much more.For more than one hundred profiles of lethal loners and killer couples, Bluebeards and black widows, cannibals and copycats-- this is an indispensable, spine-tingling, eye-popping investigation into the dark hearts and mad minds of that twisted breed of human whose crimes are the most frightening . . . and fascinating.

Subjects: Nonfiction, True Crime, Serial murderers, Serial murders, History, SOCIAL SCIENCE

More by Harold Schechter

Books like this

Popular books of similar length