Killer Asylum

by David R. Williams

"...a treat for all true lovers of horror who have been turning anorexic thanks to a diet of noodle thin ‘frighteners’. The master of blood and gore is here and he is making a bold statement".

264 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2003

About the author

David R. Williams, born in 1949, experienced the '60s up close and personal. Taking 1968 off before entering college, he shipped out with the merchant marines, fought against the Vietnam War, worked to elect McCarthy president, rioted in Grant Park, and arrived at Harvard in time for the campus takeover. He later earned a Masters in Theology from Harvard Divinity School and a PhD in American Civilization from Brown. He wrote Wilderness Lost and Sin Boldly! and won the "Excellence In Teaching" Award at George Mason University. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Czechoslovakia in 1991, has two sons, Nathan and Sam, and lives in a former black community, "Swampoodle," where he writes and brews his own bitter beer.

Reviews

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is as gruesome and action-packed as any you are likely to find in bookstores today, complete with a kick-ass female FBI agent and a devilishly intelligent serial murderer as her nemesis. Williams has an extensive vocabulary of the vulgar which he uses to the full extent to describe the horror of what happens when a bunch of institutionalized serial killers manage to take over the asylum.

Williams has packed a lot of interesting ideas into a compact and quick read. Especially ambitious is his attempt to bring to life so many extreme characters. Although the ringleader of the madness, Soren Cabal, is fascinating I sometimes missed the intimacy of exploring the pathology of one specific madman. But having an asylum full of killers is what really puts the action over the top.

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have no idea how to rate a book like this. Part of me loved it, and would give it 5 stars, but the other half of me cringes as I realize I actually read this book the whole way through... So, 3 stars seems like a good counter balance.
This book is not for the prudish or faint-hearted. It is violent, graphic, descriptive and often over the top. It follows an FBI agent who, as a little girl, watched her family brutally murdered while she was hiding in a closet. It (obviously) changed her and shifted the focus of her life. She is now tracking down serial killers and bringing in the bad guys. One particular creepy, crazy, psycho serial killer 'targets' her specifically, and they play a little bit of cat and mouse, without the reader ever really sure who is cat, and who is mouse. She eventually brings him down, and they put him into a new 'project'- the new asylum designed and used to study serial killers. Which means these brilliant doctors have locked themselves away in a facility with the entire inmate population being the craziest, creepiest and most brutal of the serial killers in federal prison. Not the brightest idea ever.
Before long, the inmates, under the guidance and direction of the killer our main character just put away, decide to revolt, and they completely take over the facility. The main killer (Cobel maybe... it's been a while...) tells the police/FBI people trying to regain control that he will only negotiate with HER, and that if anyone inside the facility is to survive, she must enter, alone and unarmed, to play a little game that he designed just especially for her. What follows is insane amounts of death, blood, vulgarities, mayhem and madness.
It was such an interesting read. Each of the serial killers locked away inside the asylum had their own unique traits and defects that made them unique and especially horrific. I have always been intrigued by the minds, methods and motives behind serial killers, which made this book especially appealing. However, I really think I could have done without the intense level of graphic description. It's an interesting look into the madness that is serial killers and the lengths we go to try and understand them. I guess, if nothing else, from this book we should take away the knowledge that it is probably NOT a good idea to put a large number of very violent, deranged, hostile and heavily muscled serial killers (or any other type of criminal) into one facility, no matter how secure you think they are...