Homicidal

"People simply will not accept the fact that there is such a thing as a homicidal mind," Truman Capote once said, "that there are people who would kill as easily as they would write a bad check, and that they achieve satisfaction from it." Paul Alexander's new Kindle Single Homicidal takes a look into such a mind. Homicidal is the story of the almost 25-year serial-murder crime spree of Lonnie Franklin Jr., who is alleged to have killed at least ten women in Los Angeles, if not more. Nicknamed by the media the Grim Sleeper, because there appeared to be a 13-year lull in the killings, Franklin met most of the women through random encounters that ended in murder. Significant blunders by the Los Angeles Police Department helped Franklin avoid arrest for years. He lived as the "serial killer next door," even collecting a government pension.

Homicidal brings the reader into the action as Paul Alexander uses firsthand accounts and law enforcement documents to recreate dialogue and descriptions of key events. Employing the research and writing skills that have made Murdered and Accused among the all-time Kindle Singles favorites, Alexander has written a thriller that happens to be true. The story is set against the backdrop of long-needed changes in LAPD, serial killers in California, and the difficulties in building a prosecution against a suspect in a case as sprawling and complicated as this one.

In true crime, Paul Alexander is the bestselling author of the Kindle Singles Murdered and Accused-and now Homicidal. A leading journalist for many years, Alexander has published eight widely praised books-among them Rough Magic, A Biography of Sylvia Plath; the bestseller Boulevard of Broken Dreams: The Life, Times, and Legend of James Dean; and Salinger: A Life-and over one hundred major articles for publications ranging from The New York Times to Rolling Stone.