(25/05/22)
There was a time when I was immersed in dark things - movies, books, facts. The darker it was, the more fascinated I became. Murders, blood, dark corners of the human mind. Then came the period when fascination turned into revulsion. I saw only the bad in everyone, everyone had that monster inside. I started to avoid things that I used to enjoy consuming until then. I didn't want to have constant reminders in front of me about what we are like and what we are capable of, there was already enough in the world around us, why dive into it even more.
And yet, when I passed by a book called "Thomas Quick: The Making of a Serial Killer" several times in the bookstore, it was this old fascination it touched, that, despite everything, never completely left. I approached that book again and again, grabbed it again and put it down again, thinking that in a time of war, the atrocities of which weighed heavily on me, I didn't want to add to them with more murders. Nevertheless, the interesting cover and the unconventional plot - where the murderer was not the murderer this time - finally made me put it on the counter and take it home.
More than a story of a serial killer, however, it is ultimately the story of Sweden's biggest judicial scandal – or how it was discovered that Sweden's biggest serial killer didn't kill anyone. This fact is known since the beginning, so there are no surprises if we exclude those about the behavior of the investigators, the prosecutor and the nurses. The whole book describes the process of how it came to such a thing in the first place and what was behind it. It's more voluminous and detailed, but if someone is interested (I volunteer) in investigative journalism, murder, law and psychology, it's an interesting read. And quite bizarre from the point of view that something like this could happen - especially in such a developed country. It would surprise me less in my own.
The downside of this book, despite the interesting subject matter and the investigative work well done, is the repetitiveness of some of the information, which is distracting. There are many cases and details, and there is no clear timeline. Therefore, not only does no one want to re-read what they read a while ago, but this repetition can easily confuse the reader and make the book more messy. There were also passages that I couldn't stop reading and there were passages that were a little less captivating. Although my attention was never completely lost, I can imagine that many people in these parts of the book and for these reasons may become disinterested, and that's a shame. I know that Hannes died during the writing of this book and maybe that had an impact, but I don't know how deep, as I don't know what he managed to process from it himself.
Anyway, it was a very interesting read and I admire a job well done by the journalist. Because if the detail-obsessed perfectionist hadn't poked his nose into this case, Thomas Quick would have still been Sweden's biggest killer. But the book is also fascinating for many other topics than just its fictional serial killer. When I finally put the book in my backpack, I did so because it seemed safe in this case. This person wasn't a murderer after all, so it won't be a difficult read in that regard, will it? But I was wrong. Apart from the fact that the murders he confessed to are still described, there were other things, perhaps even more disturbing in the end, than reading about a serial killer.
Such as the fact that the real killers continued to walk free while their crimes were readily attributed to an innocent person in this case. How often you can't trust systems and people who keep a protective hand over us. How unreliable some medical treatment and practices have been (and perhaps still are) and how psychologists and psychiatrists are also just people with their own motivations and mistakes, their own – perhaps sometimes unorthodox – fascinations and biases. How the media manipulates us, how we are fed pieces of information bordering with lies, from which we form our life beliefs. What one's own mind can force a person to do, just to make others find him interesting, to finally be noticed by someone, to not be so alone, and how in the end each of us really just wants not to be forgotten and does everything to prevent that from happening.
So much so that sometimes he turns himself into the biggest serial killer of his country.
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