Forgotten Victims
This novel is a thinly fictionalized retelling of the story of notorious serial killer Ted Bundy. The focus of the attention is not upon the killer, however, but his victims. By taking this approach, the book pursues the theme of how victims are forgotten in the wake of crimes that become media sensations. Because the killers—or, at least, the suspected killers—are still alive and eventually put on trial, their story continues. On the other hand, the stories of the victims end with their deaths and they rarely if ever get the chance to become the real focus of media attention. It is precisely the book’s making actual flesh and blood characters of the killer’s victims—both those who died and those who survived—come to life that makes theme visceral enough to remind readers that the same effect continues today.
Deconstructing the Criminal Cult of Celebrity
The narrator purposely avoids naming the killer in this book even though all events associated clearly point to him being Ted Bundy. This is the first step in the theme of deconstructing the criminal cult of celebrity. Just as way more people can recognize and name Ted Bundy than any of his victims so does the same thing hold true for Jack the Ripper, John Dillinger, Charles Manson and any number of celebrity killers which have found fame in their wake. The very act of never identifying the Bundy character by his name is an act of subversion which mirrors that being practiced in the real world in which those pulling the triggers of mass shootings have become far more anonymous than their serial killer precursors. The theme of deconstructing this criminal cult of celebrity actually seems to be one of the primary purposes stimulating the concept of the novel in the first place.
Sisterhood vs Patriarchal Predators
The book actually features two different narrators who had very different personal interactions with the serial killer at two different points in time. As they tell their stories, most of the other major characters are women as well and most of these women have been victimized. This victimization is not limited merely to the killer. They are also at the mercy of male police officers and other within the judicial system, journalists, and even female groupies attending the trial in support of the killer. Those groupies represent a kind of perverse sisterhood at odds with the sisterhood of those trying to get past victimization toward empowerment of their own future fates and destiny. Running along beneath the narrator like a slowly simmering concept is the thematic concept that women must bond in a sisterhood to fight against patriarchal dominance that is metaphorically at its height in the form of an actual serial predator.
