I Am Not a Serial Killer (John Cleaver Series #1) »

Dan Wells lives in Orem, Utah, with his wife, Dawn, and four young children. This is his first novel.

John Wayne Cleaver is dangerous, and he knows it.

He’s spent his life doing his best not to live up to his potential.

He’s obsessed with serial killers, but really doesn’t want to become one. So for his own sake, and the safety of those around him, he lives by rigid rules he’s written for himself, practicing normal life as if it were a private religion that could save him from damnation.

Dead bodies are normal to John. He likes them, actually. They don’t demand or expect the empathy he’s unable to offer. Perhaps that’s what gives him the objectivity to recognize that there’s something different about the body the police have just found behind the Wash-n-Dry Laundromat---and to appreciate what that difference means.

Now, for the first time, John has to confront a danger outside himself, a threat he can’t control, a menace to everything and everyone he would love, if only he could.

Dan Wells’s debut novel is the first volume of a trilogy that will keep you awake and then haunt your dreams.

The Barnes & Noble Review

Considering its blunt title is I Am Not a Serial Killer, Dan Wells' debut thriller has a surprising amount of nuance mixed in with its over-the-top, slightly fantastical premise. John Wayne Cleaver, after all, knows exactly who he is: an affect-free boy obsessed with serial killers because he doesn't want to grow up to be like one, and who lives by a rigid rulebook to prevent backsliding into his namesake's territory. No wonder the people who think they are closest to him -- like his mortician mother, who urges Cleaver to try more typical hobbies -- don't understand: "sociopathy wasn't just being emotionally deaf, it was being emotionally mute, too. I felt like the characters on our muted TV, waving their hands and screaming and never saying a word out loud."

Then people start dying in gruesome ways and young John Wayne realizes someone just like him is hunting, out of control, unless he does something about it. The enjoyable climax sets things up nicely for a sequel, but I Am Not A Serial Killer might have been brilliant had it kept John Wayne's story within realist waters instead of venturing into outright horror.

--Sarah Weinman