Killing Time

by Thomas Berger

Tells the story of Joseph Detweiler, a well-mannered murderer with a bizarre outlook on life

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Novels

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Thomas Louis Berger was an American novelist, probably best known for his picaresque novel Little Big Man, which was adapted into a film by Arthur Penn. Berger explored and manipulated many genres of fiction throughout his career, including the crime novel, the hard-boiled detective story, science fiction, the utopian novel, plus re-workings of classical mythology, Arthurian legend, and the survival adventure.

Berger's use of humor and his often biting wit led many reviewers to refer to him as a satirist or "comic" novelist, though he rejected that classification.

Reviews

[Christopher Sutch · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the tightest, most concise, and most brilliant of Berger's early novels (and I've given two of them prior to this one five-star ratings). Berger uses the killer Joe Detweiler as a tool to make the oddities of our legal system, culture (c. 1967), psychology, and philosophy seem strange and to highlight how we, ourselves, are complicit in the climate of crime in which we live and make our everyday lives. That so many people in the book (and also so many of the reviewers of the book) get caught in desiring to aid in Detweiler's efforts to kill Time--to make Time stop, to end its "tyranny" over the living--is a testament to Berger's skill as a writer and thinker. Detweiler, himself, apparently comes to realize that this stance is wrong by the end of the book, though this escapes the notice of the police officer who is closest to him (as well as to the reviewers mentioned above). Berger subtly and implicitly critiques the ethics of such a project as the dehumanizing trap that they are. A major novel that has yet to see its stock rise to the proper height.

[Philip Fracassi · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really amazing book. Terrifically written, super-creepy and well-plotted.

One of the great books of the serial killer genre that you will ever read.

Read this book.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

That Thomas Berger's name and books are not mentioned more often--or, seemingly, at all--is a mark of shame on the literary scene. He's such a great writer. I've been reading his stuff for years and was in the middle of rereading Sneaky People when I read of his death in 2014. I had corresponded with him many times and he always returned wonderful and long letters about his work--and also asking me about mine.

But enough about me. Killing Time is a novel that gets exponentially better every twenty pages. It's Berger's pastiche of true-crime (parts read like The Executioner's Song), philosophy lecture (parts read like the Apology), police procedural (parts read like Ed McBain's 87th precinct series). But it never devolves into parody for the sake of a laugh. Berger's theme--how can one fight the progress of time?--is serous. What's great is that the conversations between Detweiler, the killer, and other characters never solve the issue because you can't solve it. You can only talk about it.

The book is also filled with Berger's trademark asides and authorial finesse. Here's one sample, when a lawyer, is being strangled:

Melrose had never been seized by the throat his life long. He had not engaged in physical violence since boyhood, and then, undersized, he did not favor it as a mode of intercourse with his fellow creatures, as he had implied in the story he told Detweiler on their first meeting. Later he had fleshed out, but from his early twenties onward he had rarely taken any exercise worth the name. He habitually ate rich foods and drank hearty wines. In the bathtub he was not as sleek as when buttoned into his English suits. He was quite corpulent, his blood pressure ran high, and any quickening of foot pace cost him effort in breath. He had never received instruction and techniques of self-defense. Added to these disadvantages, his present role is victim of an attack was an absolute reversal of values to him and hence severely shocking; his profession was to be above the battle.

There are dozens of passages like this and more seemingly throwaway asides, as when a detective is looking in a shop window for a Christmas gift: "His son had asked for a basketball, but Tierney resented being told what to buy. It was alien to the spirit of Christmas." Or when Berger notes of an attorney, "He was a lawyer, trained to not show his feelings except as a device." Or when he depicts a character's thoughts about her husband: "Betty's trouble had always been that when she found a man with whom she felt intellectual affinity, he did not appeal to her physically, and vice-versa. She could hardly bear to be alone in Arthur's presence unless he was pawing her." These are the kinds of sentences, always elegant, that knock me out when I read Berger at his best.

I reread it for the first time in twenty years and it stands up well. Time hasn't touched this one.

[Bill FromPA · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thomas Berger explores the aftermath of a triple murder, from the discovery of the crime to the sentencing of the killer. At first, as he switches between the viewpoints of the family of the victims, reporters trying to create newspaper stories from the family’s experiences, detectives assigned to the case and the killer himself, it seems the author intends to create a sort of snapshot of a community as it is affected by a brutal and apparently senseless crime, but as the narrative progresses he focuses more and more on one of the detectives and especially upon the actions and thoughts of the killer, Joe Detweiler, a mentally unstable young man with a deceptively meek demeanor but capable of sudden and extreme violence in reaction to seemingly trivial irritations. The novel suffers from a tendency to fall between two formats, an objective look at crime and justice by way of multiple viewpoints and a subjective look at these issues through the eyes of a mentally unstable individual. This imbalance is especially aggravated by the almost equal attention Berger gives to two apparently unrelated aspects of the story: an extramarital affair between a detective and the sister of one of the victims and Detweiler’s obsession with time and his quest to step outside the flow of time and achieve a “Realization”, which is the bringing back to life of a past moment in all its details. Detweiler’s ideas do not, to this reader, form any sort of coherent philosophical viewpoint, nevertheless the author obviously felt it was important to include them in some detail. The rather Proustian goal of Realization would seem to put Detweiler in the role of a kind of author, manipulating time and events to achieve a result he only vaguely imagines, a role which is also indicated by his insistence that he “killed” the three people, but did not “murder” them, the kind of distinction an author might make about characters in a novel. However, Berger never presses this metafictional aspect of his story and it remains only a possible reading.
Previous: Little Big Man
Next: Vital Parts

[James Varney · Rating 5 out of 5]

A forgotten, almost unknown gem from a writer probably best known for the movie made of his "Little Big Man." I'm not even sure if "Killing Time" is even in print anymore. But this is an outstanding novel. Detweiler is a bizarre character and dominates the book, but there are so many other excellent characters here: the detectives, Tierney and Shuster, the lawyer Melrose, the sister of a murdered woman, even a rundown alcoholic boarder, Starr, is well drawn. "Killing Time" is one of those novels almost no one reads, but that people who love great novels should.

[Bob Box · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read in 1975. Big fan of his book Little Big Man but what this was about I have no idea.

[NataliaB · Rating 4 out of 5]

The dialogues after the arrest are superb, but I found the previous part (father and daughter interviews for instance) not matching the story line and not necessary

[Rick Goff · Rating 5 out of 5]

According to other reviews this novel is out of print. That’s a real shame, because it’s a beauty.

[Aaron Martz · Rating 3 out of 5]

A plodding, disorganized psychological thriller. Berger obviously had not hit his stride. He would cover similar ground in a much more succinct, elegant, and humorous fashion in The Houseguest and Meeting Evil. Here, he rambles incessantly as the plot follows a serial killer, the detectives who are after him, and the remaining family of his victims. The serial killer, named Detweiler, is obsessed to lunacy with time being the downfall of man, and in finding some way to transcend it, and he extrapolates endlessly at every given opportunity. Its more as if Berger did not know how to sum him, or anything, up. The ideas and characters are interesting, but it could have been parred down a hundred pages.

[Cws]

M Ber

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

great book, about a very likable serial killer. Berger does it again. The guy can write anything!

[Dan Honeywell · Rating 2 out of 5]

It seems that Berger's books are either really good or really bad. This one is just plain bad, even after a great first page.

[Jack Heath]

Synopsis: the Bayson's arrive at her mother's for Christmas and stumble on the bodies of both her mother and sister.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

written in the style of a true crime book...very funny.