Book Review : Joshua Chaplinsky - Letters to the Purple Satin Killer (2024)

Sep 6

Sep 6 Book Review : Joshua Chaplinsky - Letters to the Purple Satin Killer (2024)

When they get caught, killers immediately become the most interesting variable of any conversation they're a part of. They're not supposed to from a moral standpoint. We should preserve the memory of his victims first, but let's not kid ourselves: almost no one does that. We have a collective fascination for people who hold power over others and there isn't a much more drastic power being wielded than the one of a serial killer. It’s what Joshua Chaplinsky explores in his new novel Letters to the Purple Satin Killer.

LPSK (for the initiated) is an epistolary true crime novel that revolves around the correspondence of serial killer Jonas Williker. As you might imagine, he's got a lot of pen pals: confidantes, sexually deranged thrill seekers, his mom, cops, an almost victim, morbid memorabilia collectors and then some. Following his path from his arrest to his execution, the letters start revealing slippery aspects of Williker’s correspondents personality as he engages with them. Because it's all about them, not him.

Crafting in the Eye of the Beholder

Letters to the Purple Satin Killer is a bold and commendable proposition: it's a novel that crafts a character entirely from other characters' perspectives. It kind of works and it doesn't at the same time. You can feel the presence of Jonas Hilliker in the lives of people who crossed his path. The consequences on their personalities and life trajectories. It’s most apparent and tragic through the letters of his mysterious almost victim who is still inhabited by what happened between them. But it's still hard to get a feel for the guy.

See, Jonas Hilliker has a lot of pen pals and a lot of them come off more or less the same. His mother (who writes to him every six pages or so) was my least favorite character in the story. She remains monolithic and composed for most of the novel and it did lead me to skip a couple of her letters one or two paragraphs in. Giving birth to a serial killer must fuck with your self-perception as a nurturer and I never got that impression from her. She interacts with her own son like she would with an old friend.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that there's a distance and a cordiality to written communications that Letters to the Purple Satin Killer struggled to get over more often than not. That's a verdict on human relationships in itself if there ever was one, but it's not the most dramatic or visceral format for a novel. Don't get me wrong, Letters to the Purple Satin Killer is quite accessible and at times fun to read, but I thought it was a little bulky for what it needed to be. By design, it never really kicks into final gear.

There's a limit to what you can do with a narrative about a death row inmate if he doesn't break out.

Serial Killers r’ Us

So yeah, Letters to the Purple Satin Killer is not exactly a serial killer novel to properly speak of (at least not in the conventional sense of the term), but it asks an interesting question: why the fuck are we collectively so obsessed with violent and depraved people? Chaplinsky's hypothesis involves trauma response and identifying with the aggressor. People feel comfortable confiding to someone who did something worse than them. As if he would welcome the darkest part of them.

Entering an epistolary relationship to someone you didn't previously know (or almost) is saying something about you and what your needs are more than it does about the person itself. It couldn't be any clearer than it's been made through the religious characters who want to position themselves as redeemers by claiming the soul of Jonas Williker. As the character is heavily influenced by Ted Bundy, he does embrace religion for his own self-interest near the end. Doesn’t quite work the way he would've liked.

Letters to the Purple Satin Killer has been getting rave reviews so far, but I thought it was somewhat of a failed experiment. The idea is brilliant, but the format is too rigid and the revolving characters have quantity over quality. It's not stupid or poorly written or anything like that, but it ended up not being the most thrilling thing I ever read to say the least. Joshua Chaplinsky is a factory of great ideas. He will rebound from that and give us a novel to remember next, I’m sure of that.