Guest Blogger Ethan Cross on The Evil That Men Do

An Exploration into the Minds of Serial Killers

Serial killers are like aliens among us. They think and act in ways that most of us cannot begin to comprehend, which in turn makes them fascinating. When we turn on the news and see headlines describing the deeds of a serial killer, we immediately wonder “How could a human being do something like that?” and “What drove him over the edge?” When trying to unravel these mysteries, investigators often look to the person’s past. They search for an event or series of events that led this seemingly normal person to their ultimate fall from the realm of the socially acceptable into the world of the criminally insane. But then, we wonder if there is more at work behind these actions than a traumatic childhood or series of bad experiences. Was this person born broken? Are they evil? Most researchers accept that the deviant behavior of serial killers is a combination of many factors. When questioned about nature vs nurture, one psychologist asked, “Which contributes more to the area of a rectangle, its length or its width?” And yet, there is no simple answer, and some maintain that the circumstances into which a person is born determines their personality.

In my novels, The Shepherd and The Prophet, I touch upon the concept of nature vs nurture as I place the reader into the mind of a twisted psychopath named Francis Ackerman. Ackerman’s father was a psychologist who wanted to prove that he could create a monster by subjecting his seemingly normal son to every known traumatic event that had occurred in the lives of modern day serial killers. His thinking is obviously flawed because by trying to prove his theories, he establishes that there must be something broken within himself that he could have passed onto his son, giving credence to the very concept he set out to disprove. While this is only a small piece in the grand tapestry of the novel, it’s still an important factor in understanding the twisted thoughts and character of a man like Ackerman.

In a study conducted by the FBI, researchers found that 74% of the killers surveyed experienced some type of abuse, whether physical or psychological, during their childhood. 43% reported that they experienced sexual abuse firsthand. The abused child growing up to become a serial killer has become a cliche within our society, and yet there is a definite link between abuse at a young age and violent behavior later in life. However, the fact remains that most people who were abused as a child don’t grow up to become Ted Bundy, and there are many killers that had a normal childhood. So, while abuse and circumstance is definitely a factor, there must be more behind the madness.

We like to think that we are the masters of our own fate, but the truth is that much of who we are was determined before we spoke our first word or even took our first breath. The intricate make-up of our genes had already laid out a certain path before us. We can overcome this and change our fate, but that doesn’t negate the fact that certain barriers or advantages exist from the moment of our births. A five-foot-four man can play professional basketball, but he has a much greater barrier than someone born to be seven-foot-one. And beyond the physical characteristics, there are certain mannerisms and behaviors that we seem to inherit as well. Since my daughter was a tiny baby, she has tucked her thumb into her palm and held it with the rest of her fingers. The gesture seemed strange to me at first, until I realized that I do that constantly. She obviously didn’t learn this behavior from me, and it’s fascinating to think that such a small action could be coded within her genetic sequence. It stands to reason that a person could be born with an inherited pre-disposition to violent behavior, but is there even more than genetics and circumstance at work?

There are also certain religious or philosophical issues to consider. Is there an evil or negative force at work in the universe beyond what we can see and easily quantify? These factors are often dismissed by the psychiatric community, but since most of us believe in some sort of higher power, we can’t help but wonder at the existence of evil. Although this is an area that is even more difficult to study and classify, I believe it’s where the true key to deviant behavior may be found. I believe that all serial killers, regardless of varying circumstance and genetics, share one common trait. They all harbor a darkness inside themselves, a darkness that shines through in their terrible deeds. But the truly scary thing is that I believe we all carry this darkness or capacity for evil to some degree, and this is where genetics, knowledge, and the events of our pasts come into play. These factors contribute to our ability to hold the darkness at bay. We’ve all learned from a very young age how to manage our impulses. Otherwise, we would allow that sudden animal instinct of anger or lust to elevate into rape or murder and our society would quickly crumble.

I’ve always found this concept of darkness and the questions that go along with it to be fascinating. Can the worst killer overcome the darkness and find some form of redemption? Can they learn to control the darkness despite the barriers working against them? What happens to a good man who embraces the darkness with the best of intentions under a banner of righteousness? It’s these concepts, along with others, that I explore within the pages of my novels.

ETHAN CROSS is the International Bestselling and Award-Winning Author of The Shepherd, The Cage, Callsign:Kinight, and his latest, The Prophet–a novel described by bestselling author Jon Land as “The best book of its kind since Thomas Harris retired Hannibal Lecter” while #1 New York Times Bestselling Author Lisa Gardner said, “The surprises are fast and furious and will leave you breathless to read more.”

Hold Page 1 Clancy Died!

The King is dead!

For myself and millions of others, Tom Clancy, was the King of the techno-thriller. I was brought into reading fiction by his excellent work. I have first editions of every one of his Jack Ryan series. But what I really got from Mr. Clancy was a reverence and respect for those who risk their tomorrows for our safety today. Before The Hunt for Red October, Clear and Present Danger, The Sum of All Fears and the others, military heroes were mostly one-dimensional war-fighters. Clancy opened them up, made them regular people with a skill set to be respected and he gave them souls. Without overtly writing it out, he revealed the warrior’s code, he brought a level of admiration, professionalism and honor that filled in the outlines sketched by the likes of John Wayne et al.

Clancy also appealed to me because he was a master at explaining the technical on the way to laying the foundation for a heart-racing story. Also because he was just an insurance salesmen fooling around with his kid’s video game and synthesized one of the greatest Naval techno-thrillers of all time.

His prescient detailing of a jumbo jet passenger plane being used as a guided missile years before 9/11 was the kernel at the heart of this very blog, “It’s Only Fiction `til It Happens!”

I have homages to TC throughout my work. Just short of plagiarism, my Dick Bridgestone, super-operative, who is a fierce warrior and expert spy, is kinfolk of John Terrence Kelly or as we know him, Clancy’s John Clark.

In fact, in my first book, I had my lead character, Bill Hiccock actually consult a best selling author on some “What-if” scenarios as he tried to figure out what the bad guys were up to. With Clancy in mind, I set the meeting on a palatial mid-atlantic estate on the Chesapeake, replete with military artifacts and statues and hardware on the grounds. I had him negotiating his “rate” as getting to fire off the 16-inch guns on the U.S.S. Iowa, his fall back position was if he could shoot off one cruise missile. Speaking as a “novelist” he gave my Professor Hiccock the novel idea which became the inciting element to his quest. My “Clancy” couched his idea in the phrase, “If I were writing the book I’d….”

Tom Clancy has achieved what many of us write for, immortality. Although he is gone, his work will never leave us.

God rest your soul, Tom Clancy.

Here’s the excerpt from The Eighth Day where I had Hiccock meet with Frank “Clancy” Harris:

CHAPTER 12 PEN AND SWORD

The exclamation “Pull!” was followed shortly by an ear-piercing shotgun blast which shattered a clay pigeon. The pieces fell serenely into the Chesapeake Bay. The skeeter, in shooting goggles, ear protectors, duck hunter’s hat, and red flannel jacket, was bestselling author Frank Harris. When he was 45, he started fooling around with some military-styled video games, and a year later wrote his first thriller, which became a huge hit.

At the age of 55, the former bank manager was a multi-million-dollar word machine churning out high-tech spy and political novels. Although Harris never served in the military, when his publisher dressed him up in pseudo military casual attire for the picture on his dust jackets, he looked every bit the part of a retired flag officer. He had handsome features, and the peaked cap covering his balding head made him appear years younger.

He was firing from the jetty that extended into the bay from his 25-acre waterfront estate. Hiccock, standing next to him, recoiled from the kickback as the next blast emptied out of the double-barrel shotgun in his hands.

“This is about the terrorists isn’t it?” Harris asked as he removed his ear protectors and walked over to the gun table.

Hiccock smiled. How could he have expected this guy not to figure it out? “Let’s make believe you didn’t ask that and I didn’t nod, okay?”

“Just like in one of my books. What’s the Washington braintrust think?”

“They’re looking for the ghost of cold wars past. They are so inside that box, a light goes on when you open the door. That’s why I’m here.”

“Generals always lose the start of the next war because they fight it like the last war. After a few licks, they’ll catch on.” Harris wiped down the shotgun and placed it on the table.

“Something tells me the clock may run out before we get off the last shot.”

“Well, I think I know what you’re looking for, but it’s going to cost you.”

Hiccock surveyed the vast accumulated wealth of Harris’ surroundings. A quarter of a mile behind him, knights in armor, forever mounted on stuffed horses, stood on motionless display behind the 20-foot glass windows of Harris’ armaments room. A Sherman Tank was propped up like a statue with a landscaped circular garden surrounding it amidst original Remmington sculptures with a few Robert E. Lee pieces thrown in for good measure. It was Harris’ private homage to man’s largest and longest-running endeavor: war.

“Forgive me, but what else could you possibly need or want?”

“The U.S.S. Iowa.”

“The what?”

“I want one magazine battery, three cycles, nine rounds,” Harris said matter-of-factly as he reset his “ear muffs” and heaved a shotgun into the ready position. “Pull!” he called to his houseboy, butler, or whoever was launching the clay pigeons, 50 yards downrange from them. The clay pigeon disappeared in a smear of powder. “I get to squeeze ‘em off!”

“Let me get this straight, Mr. Harris. You want the United States battleship Iowa for target practice?”

“Each shell weighs 2,700 pounds, is 16 inches around and can hit a target 20 miles away. Ever hear one of those babies go off as it belches out flame and smoke? What a sight! What a sound!” He gently wiped down his prize shotgun. He picked up a smaller weapon.

“How about a million dollars, a plane, and enough fuel to make it to a sympathetic country?”

“Okay, one cruise missile?”

“I can’t believe I am negotiating weapons of mass destruction with you!”

“That’s what you need to afford the best-selling author who has everything.”

“Deal. I hope.”

“Trance-inducing visual graphics,” Harris said plainly.

Hiccock again smiled. “That’s certainly outside the box. You mean brainwashing by computer?”

“If it was my novel and I was writing it, I would have the bad guys lulling regular people in with hypnotic graphics, the kind only a computer can make. Clicking the mouse would make the graphics swirl and perform. When their mouse click responses start to lag or match a predetermined rhythm, then I‘d know they were going under and ready to accept input. All that would be left to do is implant the commands. Maybe by telephone.”

“That is brilliant. I’ll order a check of the phone company logs.”

“Yeah, maybe I shouldn’t have told you. It would have made a great book. Well it’s yours now. Time to feed more fish.”

“Feed more fish?”

Harris picked up one of the target pigeons. “I have them specially made from freeze-dried compressed fish food. Mixed with a little egg, they harden like clay. The minute they hit the water they re-hydrate into fish food.” He brandished an Uzi sub- machine gun. “Watch this.” He smiled at Hiccock. “Pull!” he barked.

With the sound of a zipper, the gun spit out 30 rounds per second. The plate was not exactly shattered as much as separated in mid-air, continuing in the rough shape of a plate until gravity pulled the falling pieces apart. “Neat huh?” he asked with the excitement of a schoolboy.

•••

Tom Avitabile
https://tomavitabile.com/
tom@spadvertising.com

Spy Games – For Real

When I wrote PWNED in 2011, I imagined something pretty outlandish for a premise: That the National Security Agency (or NSA) could spy on a private American citizen and in so doing uncover something that would bury that citizen in bureaucratic red tape until Kingdom come.

Why is that outlandish? Because that’s illegal. Well, it should be, anyway. Put succinctly, the idea of the NSA spying on an American citizen who then ends up in trouble should have been elaborate, well-imagined poppycock.

Enter Edward Snowden, and the whole PRISM debacle, and suddenly my self-published novel about a professional Starcraft 2 gamer doesn’t seem quite so crazy. It almost sounds eerily prescient, though I do wish it weren’t so.

The premise of my book is that Sean, a pro gamer who’s poised to dominate the biggest Starcraft 2 tournament in the world, is a serious threat to Norman, who needs to win the tournament to keep his team, his house, and his dream of quitting his job and gaming full time. Norman writes search string logarithms for the NSA, and uses his position to point the nation’s most powerful snoops right at poor Sean. Sean is a murder mystery author and, as such, has a browser history full of precisely the kind of gory, homicidal research material that makes federal agents twitchy and nervous.

Just when Sean looks to spend the next few years either in jail or in court, he flees the country with the help of a hot gamer girl and gives Norman a heart attack when he shows up in South Korea anyway despite Norman’s best efforts.

As tickled as I am to be on this site, where authors who saw the shape of things to come can brag about how they saw it coming, I really do wish my version of an NSA that abuses its power and oversteps its bounds could have remained fiction. Especially since I’m a thriller writer and have done plenty of searches that would certainly raise eyebrows if the NSA decided to start paying close attention to me. Here’s hoping for a future where all this is an unpleasant memory and the NSA leaves curious thriller writers well enough alone.

Remember this if you want to sound impressive at your next dinner party: The NSA was founded in 1952 for the express purpose of collecting and monitoring foreign counterintelligence. All those satellites and baffles and extra-large microphones are supposed to be pointed away from American citizens, ostensibly because it’s the FBI’s job to spy on us. Executive Order 12333 states that the NSA is to collect, “foreign intelligence or counterintelligence” while not “acquiring information concerning the domestic activities of United States persons.” The agency’s activities are supposed to be restricted by the Fourth Amendment (you know that one, it’s the unreasonable searches and seizures one).

Guest Blogger Erika Mitchell

Erika Mitchell showed early promise as a writer, winning the Beverly Cleary writing contest in 1995. The winning stories were printed into a book. Erika’s mother is the only person alive with a copy of that book.

She wrote her first novel (a really horrible chick-lit thing) that she promptly relegated to the back of her hard drive. A couple years later she tried again, this time writing a thriller novel. She had way too much fun writing it, and a couple months later wrote another one.

Erika self-published her first novel, Pwned, in June 2011, and her second novel, Blood Money, was published by Champagne Books in February 2013.

Erika lives in Seattle with her wonderfully geeky husband and their two children. When she isn’t reading and writing she’s been known to indulge in an eclectic range of interests.

Smile… You’re Busted!

In the Hammer of God, a critical clue in the murder of a leading scientist is provided by a close examination of a street camera video. Even two years ago the editorial discussion was, “Is that two convenient?” I mean a video camera just happened to catch the moment? Is anyone going to believe that?

Well welcome to “It’s Only Fiction ‘Til It Happens!” Love it or hate it, today, there are more cameras everywhere than ever before. Miniaturization, Wi-fi and Blue Tooth pretty much brings available retail technology into the realm of ‘Mission Impossible’ and ‘James Bond’. You can literally just place a camera with a sticky back anywhere and remotely view, record or analyze it, over the Internet! Radio Shack availability of what, 30 years ago, was top-secret spy craft; devices that would have entirely changed the Cold War. This week the Israelis were accused of using camera-toting Vultures to spy on Syria!

There was an execution style killing in broad daylight on Broadway in New York. A very similar “broad daylight” circumstance to the murder in Hammer of God. And here again, the police have multiple videos to help them solve the case.

So in this case “Big Brother” watching is a good thing. The question is, how much, how far, how invasive could it, should it go? That is a question for society and ethicist to wrangle with.

For a writer, it’s a godsend. Imagine the possibilities. Surveillance cameras, ATM camera’s, red light cams, bus cams, train station cams, street cams, border drones, traffic drones, police drones, every smart phone, and tourist camera. All to be used as foils, blinds, misdirection or proof in modern storylines.

Or maybe not so modern, in one of my screenplays, Smile… You’re Dead!, during an autopsy a New York coroner quotes from an British novel published in the 1800’s,

“The click of the camera-shutter would lead to the snap of the hangman’s trap – was how I believe it was stated in the novel Jack the Ripper.”

Lets hope that in the case of yesterday’s cold, deliberate, lunchtime execution “the flicker of the video camera leads to the snap of the electric chair’s switch!”

BS (BlogScript): It won’t because in New York State it could only lead to life without the possibility of parole. But I think it’s a snappier quote with the ‘electric chair’ –

2 NetGalley reviews of Hammer of God

Definitely a Page Turner of Major Proportions!

Bill Hiccock is a man of science that works for the President of the United States. He created a network of scientists that bounce information off each other anonymously over the Internet, gleaning answers through virtual brainstorming. Information from his group starts him down the road to intercept a group of terrorists that have links to the neighborhood of his youth and childhood friends. The Islamic Jihadists put together a plot filled with twists to prevent detection, leading Hiccock and his team across the world.

The book is filled with military and scientific terminology giving the information a tensely realistic feeling. The plot races from action to action, leaving the reader breathless. The author paints such realistic pictures that the reader rides on the belief that the descriptions of Washington, defense, and the battle against terror are entirely accurate. Best thriller I have read in a long time. I missed the first in this series, but I will definitely go find it ASAP. I would recommend this for anyone who enjoys tense, military, political thrillers.

Richard Rachey added:

This was one of the best books I have every read. It was one of those books that you do not want to put down. It was very well written, exciting, realistic and believable. The characters were very well setup and their lives and feeling brought out. It was very easy to put yourself in their places as the story progressed. The plot was great, the the author should receive KUDO’s for a great novel. I would love to read the rest of his books in the series.