Now, if you know me, you know that I do enjoy a good true crime documentary. Whether you are a fan of true crime or not, everyone can appreciate a good documentary, where the facts are all laid out, experts share their thoughts on the matter, and people can pay attention to what truly matters: the families and friends who are left dealing with the aftermath of a crime.

True crime documentaries reached their peak during quarantine with streaming platforms feeding their viewers with one serial killer documentary after the other. However, this obsession over serial killer documentaries is questionable. Loosely based on the facts, biographies of these killers cast attractive young actors as their monsters, all the while claiming they are retelling stories from the perspective of those who suffered/ were affected the most.

Jessica Knoll in her true crime-based retelling, Bright Young Women, aims to criticise the societal obsession with true crime and serial killers and the fetishism that surrounds their actions. The novel uses a real-life event of a sorority that is attacked by a serial killer who haunts the Pacific Northwest. Yet, at Florida State University’s vibrant sorority in Tallahassee, the threat feels distant. The sorority president, Pamela Schumacher’s, choice to stay home instead of going out with her sisters seems coincidental, but it eventually saves her life. During that night, strange noises wake her up at 3 a.m., and Pamela witnesses a scene of unthinkable violence that haunts her for the rest of her life – the death of her sorority sister and best friend, Denise.

In Seattle, Tina Cannon also has to navigate an aftermath, when her friend, Ruth Wachowsky, mysteriously disappears from a crowded beach in broad daylight. Tina immediately wants to connect with Pamela as she recognises and insists that these crimes were done by the same man. This man will be known to us as the All-American Sex Killer.

Knoll criticises the obsession with serial killers and the fictional nickname she gives to the killer in the book, All-American Sex Killer highlights this ironic glorification of them. And it is true, a lot of serial killers have been attached to edgy nicknames that celebrit-ise them and make them sound like geniuses while in reality, they make people suffer. Nicknames such as the “The Night Stalker,” “The Lady Killer,” “BTK” killer. They are given these nicknames by social platforms to initially grab the attention of the audience, scare the public, and essentially capitalise on people who suffered and have been suffering the consequences of those atrocious actions. By using this extreme and fetishised nickname, All-American Sex Killer, I would say Knoll lays a foundation for her critique of how serial killers have been viewed by the public, and through this she mirrors the disturbing irony of these serial killers being viewed as smart and mythical instead of for the evil they are.

Knoll insists on giving some kind of title to the killer. This leads to him being referred to as “the defendant” throughout the novel. I have two thoughts on this decision which contribute to my inner conflict of how I see this novel. Firstly, this legal term is used to distance the readers from the killer, dehumanise him, to strip him of the glorification of his identity as a genius. Knoll reminds us that he is just a coward who deprived multiple young women of their futures. And indeed, when I would read the word defendant, I did not associate it to a person, but a figure of one.

On the other hand, I cannot help but associate this fictional character with his not-so-fictional and very-real inspiration. We all know the serial killer who decided to defend himself in court in his megalomaniac need to prove himself by trying to outsmart the system. This is one of the many instances where the author blurs the lines between fictional and non-fictional events which ultimately dilutes the novel’s intended message. The real purpose of the book, as mentioned, is to criticise the obsession with glorifying serial killers. I found myself unsuccessfully attempting to align those fictional elements with real-life events, and trying to see if Knoll describes them accurately.

The author is trying to put the spotlight on women, especially Pamela and Tina, both of whom lost important women in their lives. These characters, from which we are told the story, are fictional. We constantly see them trying to live their lives post-crime, and we see them struggle with not only how the public viewed their friends but also how they did. Especially Pamela, days after her friend’s death, is facing a lot of responsibilities, trying to convince everyone that they are safe but having a hard time convincing herself. She finds herself in a situation where she has to create a profile of her dead friend so the public can view her as a victim, a talented, smart, beautiful victim. Through these fictional characters, the author criticises the very real and misogynist reality family and friends face after a crime of this nature occurs. Knoll highlights the frustrating double standard of a man killing and escaping equals to him outsmarting the system, but a woman being killed, well she should have known better. But again, the choice to intertwine fiction and non-fictional is troublesome. It is closer to fabricating the truth than to criticising the truth.

It is also worth noting the genre the novel claims to be. The novel is marketed as a thriller, mystery, and fiction which initially seems like the perfect combination. However, the novel uses real-life events which makes me question how much of a mystery this book has to offer. The stylistic choices to support the choice of calling it a mystery are enhanced by the multiple POV’s and time frames. The book constantly goes back and forth with time, memories and flashbacks, as well as shifting narrative perspectives. This is an interesting and innovative way to narrate a mystery which I support. I became invested in the timelines and looked forward to seeing the lives of all those women come together. But at times these jumps and cuts were choppy, and their only purpose was to distract us from the real crimes. This only blurred the lines between fiction and reality and drove us even further away from the core of the novel. The author implements the genre of mystery with simultaneous sub-genres – one of them being romance – which can be distractive from the main critique that the novel wishes to provide. Still, there are a lot of metafictional moments, where Pamela talks directly to us – the readers – and snaps us back to ‘reality’ that this story is not about a man but about women and the strength they are showing as they are trying to navigate in their unpredictable lives.

After all those perspectives and narrative jumps, the choice to base this novel on a known American serial killer from the 70’s and still claiming that it is fiction made me feel mislead. This is a loose biography of a serial killer with fictional women. So, we end up back to where we started: using serial killers for marketing purposes and for entertainment concealing it as fiction, which is as close to historical fiction as it gets.

The idea of writing a novel where the fetishisation and glorification of serial killers are highlighted and criticised is brilliant. The idea to write a novel where we shed light on women’s stories is also brilliant. The idea to criticise the lack of justice in the justice system and how easily it is manipulated is brilliant. But fictionalising real-life events to create a retelling of a serial killer and his crimes brings us to square one. The critique that the novel wishes to pose is self-erased.

The novel needs a stronger foundation. It needs to put both of its feet on one side, either completely fictional and critical or completely non-fictional where things are called what they need to be called. An in-between plot only forces in-between opinions and does not leave space for the reader to reflect on the events that are unfolding before them because they are distracted by the level of accuracy of the events and reliability of the author, instead of the lives of those who were affected and still are to this day.

If I’d read these books during the peak of serial killer documentaries, I would have been blown away. However, it is now clear that this is a novel worth reading, yet the book does not deliver the criticism that it promises.