You know on television shows when people do that long, slow whistle when they just simply do not know where to start or how to react? Imagine me doing that right now. Whew.

Dennis Nilsen was born in 1945 in Scotland. He had a difficult childhood, as his family was not well off financially. (A lot of people were not in the post war years.) His mother and father did not have the best relationship, ultimately splitting up. In this book, Nilsen calls his paternity into question as well. He also speaks about the relationship that he had with his grandfather, which involved sexual abuse. If that is not something that you can handle reading, steer clear of this book, because he discusses it in graphic detail. He also discusses his sexuality, and all of his sexual encounters, in graphic detail. I can imagine the pressure that society put (and still does) on people who are not heterosexual can be really stressful. It was certainly not socially acceptable to be gay in this time period, especially as a member of the armed forces, and later a policeman.

Nilsen moved into a private apartment in the late 1970s, and began inviting men home. He subsequently killed at least twelve men, probably more, and attempted to kill another seven. A lot of those were homeless people he lured in by offering them a place to stay, or gay men he met and lured back for sexual encounters. He kept the bodies inside the apartment for a considerable amount of time before disposing of them in various ways. His method of disposal was what finally got him caught. Be warned that he does go into extreme detail about this topic. I am not going to go into detail here, partly because I don't want to spoil the book and partly because it is grim, but if you want to know more about his crimes before deciding to read this, there is plenty of information out there. I didn't realize that he died to recently (2018) until I did a Google search for images of his apartment.

I learned about Nilsen through an episode of a podcast (The Last Podcast On The Left) that I listen to regularly. I read another book about him in the past, but this one was written by him. I ran across it, and thought I would give it a try. I hardly ever find books written from the point of view of the actual culprit, and I was interested to see how he would portray himself. A lot of times, killers will try to paint themselves in a different way that what the evidence clearly shows, but I believe that he was very reflective and truthful about his life experiences and murderous habits. He was well spoken, and the book was not hard to read or even enjoy, as bad as that sounds to say. I saw other reviews that warned about the extreme graphic detail throughout the book, and I can imagine it could be very triggering for someone who has experienced sexual abuse or violations like that. I would strongly warn you to think about that before making the choice to read this book. I thought it was very interesting to get inside the mind of someone so notorious that committed some really grim crimes. If you are into true crime or psychology, this might be a great book for you to try out.