Harold Schechter - Deviant

DEVIANT

DONT MISS THESE ACCLAIMED NOVELS BY HAROLD SCHECHTER

NEVERMORE

A dazzling tale featuring Edgar Allan Poe
Now available in hardcover from Pocket Books

and

OUTCRY

Inspired by Psycho Killer Ed Gein

LOOK FOR THESE TRUE-CRIME SHOCKERS BY AMERICAS PRINCIPAL
CHRONICLE OF ITS GREATEST PSYSCHOPATIC KILLERS. *

BESTIAL

Amazon.com

Compellingchilling.

DERANGED

American Libraries

Horrifying.

DEPRAVED

Ann Rule

Shocking.

and

THE A TO Z ENCYCLOPEDIA
OF SERIAL KILLERS

by Harold Schechter and David Everitt

The Boston Book Review*

The scholarship is both genuine and fascinating.

All available from Pocket Books

AND BE SURE TO READ HAROLD SCHECHTERS NEXT TRUE-CRIME NOVEL

FATAL

The Poisonous Life of a Female Serial Killer

Coming soon from Pocket Star Books

Praise for Harold Schechters
True-Crime Masterpieces

THE A TO Z ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SERIAL KILLERS

by Harold Schechter and David Everitt

The Boston Book Review

The scholarship is both genuine and fascinating.

Rocky Mountain News (Denver)

This grisly tome will tell you all you ever wanted to know (and more) about everything from Axe Murderers to Zombies, Schechter knows his subject matter.

PI Magazine

The ultimate reference on this fascinating phenomenon.

DEVIANT
The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original Psycho

Milwaukee Journal

A solidly researched, well-written account of the Gein story.

Film Quarterly

[A] grisly, wonderful book a scrupulously researched and complexly sympathetic biography of the craziest killer in American history.

DERANGED
The Shocking True Story of Americas Most Fiendish Killer!

American Libraries

This biography of the ultimate dirty old man, Albert Fish pedophile, sadist, coprophiliac, murderer, cannibal, and self-torturer [is] as horrifying as any novel could be.

Booklist

Compelling grippingly fascinating-repulsive.

Philadelphia Inquirer

Reads like fiction but its chillingly real. What Albert Fish did would chill the bones of Edgar Allan Poe.

DEPRAVED
The Shocking True Story of Americas First Serial Killer

Caleb Carr, bestselling author of The Alienist

A meticulously researched, brilliantly detailed and above all riveting account of Dr. H. H. Holmes, a nineteenth-century serial killer who embodied the ferociously dark side of Americas seemingly timeless preoccupations with ambition, money, and power. Schechter has done his usual sterling job in resurrecting this amazing tale.

Ann Rule

This is must reading for crime buffs. Depraved demonstrates that sadistic psychopaths are not a modern-day phenomenon. Gruesome, awesome, compelling reporting.

The Boston Book Review

An astonishing piece of popular history. I unhesitatingly recommend [it] to round out your understanding of the true depth, meaning, and perversity on [this] uniquely American brand of mayhem.

Flint (MI) Journal

Destined to be a true-crime classic. As chilling as The Silence of the Lambs and as bloodcurdling as the best Stephen King novel. It will deprive you of sleep, and take your attention away from everything else on your schedule until you finish it.

Syracuse Herald-American

[Schechters] writing keeps you turning the pages.

Critical Acclaim for Harold Schechters
Novel Based on the Legend of Ed Gein

OUTCRY
Voted Best Paperback Original of 1997 by Rocky Mountain News

Rocky Mountain News (Denver)

This is a scary book.

Paintedrock.com

FOUR STARS. Harold Schechter, an internationally acclaimed expert on true-crime murders by psychopathic serial killers, changes his medium by scribing a brilliant fictional account of these monsters. All the characters are terrifyingly real. Serial-killer aficionados need to read this thrilling tale that makes most of the subgenre seem cartoonish in comparison.

Clues magazine

Schechter is unsurpassed. Terrifying. You will feel compelled to grip this novel in your hand until you finish.

Pocket Books by Harold Schechter

The A-Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers
(with David Everitt)

Bestial

Depraved

Deranged

Deviant

Outcry

Nevermore

For orders other than by individual consumers, Pocket Books grants a discount on the purchase of 10 or more copies of single titles for special markets or premium use. For further details, please write to the Vice President of Special Markets, Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, 9th Floor, New York, NY 10020-1586.

For information on how individual consumers can place orders, please write to Mail Order Department, Simon & Schuster Inc., 100 Front Street, Riverside, NJ 08075.

The Shocking
True Story of the Original
Psycho

Harold Schechter

Pocket Books
New York London Toronto Sydney

POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 1989 by Harold Schechter

Cover art copyright 1989 by Wide World Photos

Originally published in hardcover in 1989 by Pocket Books

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce
this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue
of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

ISBN: 0-671-02546-5
ISBN 13: 978-0-6710-2546-5
eISBN 13: 978-1-4391-0697-6

First Pocket Books trade paperback printing October 1998

20 19 18 17 16 15 14

POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of
Simon & Schuster Inc.

Cover design by Brigid Pearson

Cover photo courtesy of AP/Wide World Photos

Printed in the U.S.A.

Proverbs 21:16

The man that wandereth out of the
way of understanding
Shall remain in the congregation of
the dead.

A NOTE ON PRONUNCIATION

ALTHOUGH THE SPELLING OF Gein would lead one to believe that the name rhymes with fine, it is actually pronounced with a long e, as in fiend.

In 1960, a maniac dressed in the clothes of his long-dead mother took a kitchen knife to a beauty in a bathtub and permanently altered the face of American horror. The murder occurred, of course, in Alfred Hitchcocks Psycho, a movie that not only changed the way an entire generation of filmgoers felt about being alone in the shower but also gave birth to a new kind of cinematic bogeyman. Psychos monster was not a Transylvanian vampire or a slithery, tentacled creature from outer space but a shy, stammering bachelor with a boyish grin, a bland personality, and the utterly colorless name of Norman Bates.