Death, serially

Thrillers top best-seller lists and they often get their meat from the neighbourhood, points out JAI ARJUN SINGH

Dismembered bones and juvenile skulls "" the serial murders in Noida have become a talking point. India's most ruthless serial killers are a reminder that writers of pulp thrillers find their inspiration in reality. Here are some spine-chillers that could well have served as reference material for Moninder Singh Pandher and his Man Friday.

Psycho
Robert Bloch
In 1957, an unassuming Wisconsin hamlet was shaken to its core when one of its residents, the seemingly harmless Ed Gein, was discovered to be a serial killer, grave robber and necrophiliac who wore the tanned skins of his female victims and used human organs to decorate his home; small-town America had discovered a heart of darkness in its very midst.

Two years later, Robert Bloch used the Gein story as the basis for his novel Psycho.The story, about a young woman named Mary Crane who stumbles on this house of horrors, was subsequently immortalised in Alfred Hitchcock's great film.

Aftermath
Peter Robinson
This entry in Robinson's series of novels featuring Inspector Banks turned the conventions of the detective genre on its head "" by beginning with the discovery of the serial killer's identity. This, however, only provided the foundation for even darker revelations to follow.

Bodies were discovered that couldn't all be identified, and questions started to arise about whether the killer was operating alone or had an accomplice. The police procedures were realistic and they provided insights into the workings of the law.

The book still manages to be engrossing because of the well-etched characters, the underlying human tragedy and the author's effective handling of the theme that one evil quickly begets another.

Red Dragon
Thomas Harris
Harris's startling novel, still considered by many to be his best work despite the greater fame of Silence of the Lambs, came as a tonic to the serial-killer genre "" and not just because it introduced Dr Hannibal Lecter.

Will Graham, a weary detective with a not unmixed talent for closely understanding (even identifying with) the psychotic mind, is persuaded out of retirement to apprehend a killer whose fantasy persona is inspired by William Blake's painting "The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun".

Midway through the novel, the author changes our perspective, introducing us to the murderer and his red-tinted world and setting the stage for a nerve-wracking final confrontation. Harris's recurring theme that primitive impulses are forever boiling just beneath our civilised exteriors finds full expression in this superbly written story about two men trying, in very different ways, to conquer their demons.

American Psycho
Bret Easton Ellis
Patrick Bateman is a handsome, well-educated, cultured young man, a Manhattan yuppie who works as a Wall Street banker. He is also a serial killer and, being the narrator of this novel, relates his exploits in a frighteningly detached tone.

Ellis's controversial book, full of graphic violence and sex, is a critique of the plastic, consumerist culture of the 1980s as well as the ennui of high-society life. We're even left with the possibility that Bateman is an unreliable narrator, his double life being simply a fantasy that helps him deal with the relentless monotony of his life. ship between a society and the criminals it produces.

On, Off
Colleen McCullough
All over Connecticut, coloured girls, 16 years old are disappearing. It isn't till one of them appears dismembered in a refrigerator in a research centre, that a pattern of complicity is uncovered. Suspicion rests on the research centre and its inhabitants, all law-abiding but with secrets to keep.

When the mask comes off, Charles Ponsonby, the Connecticut Monster, is shot by a protester. But there's another Ponsonby behind another mask....