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    Killer Inspiration: The Author’s Guide to ‘The Remorseless Trilogy’
    Killer Inspiration: The Author’s Guide to ‘The Remorseless Trilogy’
    Killer Inspiration: The Author’s Guide to ‘The Remorseless Trilogy’
    Ebook181 pages1 hour

    Killer Inspiration: The Author’s Guide to ‘The Remorseless Trilogy’

    By Will Patching

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    About this ebook

    How does a crime writer create vicious, twisted killers? And what inspires them to write such dark, disturbing thrillers

    Find out in 'Killer Inspiration', the comprehensive companion guide to Will Patching's British crime thriller series, 'The Remorseless Trilogy'.

    In this unique blend of true crime and fiction, the author includes a sprinkling of autobiographical anecdotes shared with frankness and, on occasion, a touch of black humour.

    Inquisitive readers will be fascinated by his insights and personal observations on the creation of this twisted killer thriller trilogy.

    Dispelling the myths: A few words from the author

    "Over the years, I've had many questions about where I find the inspiration for the vicious killers I create in my thrillers, with some readers convinced I'm writing from a prison cell and others imagining I fled to Asia to escape British justice after committing violent, bloody crimes…

    Well, this exclusive publication is designed to dispel the myths about my purported criminality by highlighting some of the real-life psychopaths and other individuals who've inspired me to create the various characters in 'The Remorseless Trilogy'.

    Author insights, deleted scenes & much more

    This highly entertaining and readable companion guide includes deleted scenes, backstory, character profiles, the author's personal perspectives on inspiration, plus commentary on the real-life criminals whose evil words and deeds sparked his psychopathic villains into life.

    In this publication, for the very first time, Will also shares his conclusions about the harrowing real world experiences that have affected his approach to writing crime fiction.

    A cracking read for all book lovers curious to understand what sort of 'magic' sparks devious fictional killers into life, any readers who would like to know a little about the nuts and bolts of writing thrillers, and those avid fans keen to discover more about the plots and characters in 'The Remorseless Trilogy'.

    A 'stand alone' book that warns about spoilers

    Although sometimes billed as 'Book 4' in the trilogy, it is not essential to have read any of the author's novels.

    This guide is designed as a stand alone book BUT it does contain significant spoilers for each of the three thrillers in the trilogy: Remorseless, Mutilated and Gaslighting.

    The author has designed this edition so that the reader can dip in and out, picking the relevant sections as and when they feel the urge. To help navigate this comprehensive guide and avoid spoilers along the way, he has added warnings for all the relevant content.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWill Patching
    Release dateMar 9, 2020
    ISBN9781540112545
    Killer Inspiration: The Author’s Guide to ‘The Remorseless Trilogy’

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      Book preview

      Killer Inspiration - Will Patching

      Part I

      Remorseless Bonus Content

      Author’s Comments on Remorseless

      A pack of lies…

      While I was writing Remorseless, I was aiming to entertain but also hoped the reader would gain at least some brief insights into the mind of a violent psychopath.

      On Psychopaths

      You may have thought, nobody can be that bad while considering my violent character Peter Leech’s lack of redeeming features. But while the genuine psychopath may be superficially charming, beneath his skin he is devious, manipulative, selfish and egotistical in the extreme. He really cannot understand how you and I feel, though he may have learnt to mimic our emotions.

      Still not convinced?

      Maybe you believe that everyone is, at heart, a good person though some of us have gone off the rails due to circumstances or upbringing.

      Maybe your faith in the overall good in human nature suggests a shove in the right direction would enable them to redeem themselves, or maybe you think they can be ‘cured’ by religious conversion.

      If so, I’d urge you to read more on the subject. Perhaps skim through the quotes from real-life criminal psychopaths on my Psychopaths in Fact & Fiction website if the serial killers’ quotes that are sprinkled throughout this ebook aren’t enough to convince you. These evil felons make Leech’s escapades seem tame by comparison!

      So why did I write Remorseless?

      Well, although I have never met a serial killer, at least not knowingly, I have suffered at the hands of a couple of socialised psychopaths—the sort that are all around us, and, as my fictional forensic psychiatrist character Doc Powers says:

      ‘...they have qualities that allow them to succeed in our competitive corporate society. In spades.’

      In truth, a lot of leaders in society exhibit traits that indicate an underlying lack of conscience—the most significant factor in a psychopathic make-up. Absence of guilt and no fear of consequences, together with a lack of empathy, remove any social pressure to conform, but the most successful psychopaths mimic these emotions and manage to convince us they are normal, like Shaun Leech.

      They are not: they each have a major hole in their psyche, and although it is politically incorrect to say it, psychopaths cannot be cured of this deficiency.

      The chances are, you’ve met at least one socialised psychopath who has caused you personally some serious heartache, or if not, then certainly someone you know has suffered at the hands of one. It pays to understand these individuals and to be able to identify them—they are most definitely not all axe murderers.

      Maybe I’m weird, but I think this is one of the most important issues facing society today.

      On guilt

      The underlying theme of Remorseless is guilt. The story explores how we react to it—from the extreme remorse causing Doc’s hallucinations, through Judy Finch’s concerns over motherhood and career, to her husband John’s wayward lifestyle and his suppression of conscience: these characters describe how a normal person might be affected.

      I created Peter Leech to demonstrate how a total absence of guilt affects behaviour in direct contrast to the ‘normal’ cast of characters, and especially with Doc suffering an overabundance of that emotion. This subtext makes the tale—for me at least—intriguing, and I hope you found it so too.

      On UK Prisons

      I was asked by my original print publisher if I had been to prison as some of the scenes in Remorseless seemed to him to suggest I had. I have not, but I got the impression that he may not have believed me. I am after all, a writer of fiction and therefore a consummate liar...

      I’m sure he thought I share something in common with our murderous anti-hero, but Leech is very definitely not based on my personality or experiences. He’s a composite of characteristics from people whose paths I have had the misfortune to cross, embellished with traits found in real-life criminal psychopaths.

      Listeners and taking liberties

      As for Listeners, who are the equivalent of Samaritans within our prisons, they really do a fantastic job helping struggling inmates. I have no doubt most would be horrified to read of Leech’s escapades while masquerading as one of their number. Those scenes, like Leech himself, are all pure figments of my over-active imagination.

      My aim in giving Leech the role of Listener was to demonstrate how manipulative and cunning psychopaths can be. Despite being rightly feared by the inmates, he manages to convince the prison authorities to award him this elevated trustee status which he abuses in the most horrendous ways. In real life, psychopaths are master manipulators and often do pull the wool over the eyes of even the most hardened professionals—sometimes even the psychologists assigned to assess them.

      Apologies go to the Listeners and the Samaritans if I have caused offence with the liberties I took while writing Remorseless, but please remember, it’s a novel, and all fiction, as my brother once told me, is just a pack of lies!

      Deleted Scenes — Remorseless

      In this section you can read the scenes I deleted from Remorseless prior to online publication, including the opening that appeared in the original paperback many years ago, along with some information about an initial scene that didn’t even make the first printed edition.

      Back then, my novels were painstakingly scrawled by hand, and that first opening was never even typed up, so unlike the other deleted scenes, it won’t appear here—or anywhere else for that matter.

      Sorry!

      Believe me, it wasn’t that great anyway.

      The novel has had significant editing and updating since it was first published, so I’ll be interested to hear your thoughts on the chunks of story that I chose to remove.

      1

      The opening that never was

      The first words I wrote for the manuscript

      Image of the first page of the original Remorseless manuscript - and it was never published

      Contains Spoilers

      This is the very first page of Remorseless—and it didn't even make it to the draft typewritten manuscript.

      I decided it was too gruesome an opening, so it went in the bin.

      That original scene was about eight hundred words long, so included a few more barely legible scrawled pages after this one, all dwelling on the violence of the crime at the heart of the novel.

      All I will publish here from that original prologue are these ‘dramatic’ opening paragraphs:

      He couldn't remember when he had first decided to kill his parents. It was many years before. But he was patient. He'd waited. And today was perfect.

      He must kill his brother too, he thought...

      The whole scene was written from the killer's point of view, but the reader does not know which Leech brother is hacking away at his parents in this dreadful, frenzied, brutal and bloody attack.

      This deliberate vagueness was designed to set up the whodunnit element between Peter and Shaun—an idea I had after I started writing this scene.

      Originally, Peter was going to be the murderer from page one, yet he would always protest his innocence in such a way as to leave the reader in some doubt. My decision to make Shaun the devious, psychopathic villain responsible for their parents’ murder, albeit in a highly ambiguous way, allowed me to start motoring through the first draft.

      Alternative openings

      In the original print edition, I opted for the news article approach (below) to pop some questions into the readers' minds. More recently, I decided to show Leech murdering Cochran as the opener instead for the eBook edition, and that is the one that has stood the test of time.

      Incidentally, for the screenplay I created in the forlorn hope of finding a producer willing to bring my characters to the screen, I added a scene that is not in the book to offer an even more dramatic opening.

      This writing malarkey is very flexible!

      A quick word on Scenes

      I generally write scenes rather than chapters—there is a difference, if only in my mind. 

      My scenes tend to be shorter than the usual chapter length in novels, and this reflects my visual style. The story unveils itself in a sort of movie format in my mind resulting in these scenes of varying length, from a single paragraph to maybe twenty pages or

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