I Am Not a Serial Killer

Fans of Jeff Lindsay's Dexter series and its TV spinoff will welcome Wells's gripping debut, the first in a projected trilogy featuring 15-year-old sociopath John Wayne Cleaver. Cleaver lives in Clayton, a small town in the heart of Middle America, where he assists his mother with the family mortuary and seeks to keep his demons at bay through sessions with a psychotherapist and rigid adherence to a set of boundaries. Obsessed with serial killers, Cleaver lives in fear that the monster inside him will break out and act on his violent fantasies. When the eviscerated remains of a local man turn up behind a Laundromat, the first of several murders in which the killer butchers his prey and takes body parts as trophies, Cleaver turns detective. Wells does a good job entering the mind of his unlikely protagonist, but a surprising revelation about the Clayton killer's identity may turn off thriller readers who prefer not to mix genres. (Apr.)