Homicidal

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by Paul Alexander


First Published: 2011
 

“People simply will not accept the fact that there is such a thing as a homicidal mind,” Truman Capote once said, “that there are people who would kill as easily as they would write a bad check, and that they achieve satisfaction from it.” Paul Alexander’s new Kindle Single Homicidal takes a look into such a mind.

Homicidal is the story of the almost 25-year serial-murder crime spree of Lonnie Franklin Jr., who is alleged to have killed at least ten women in Los Angeles, if not more. Nicknamed by the media the Grim Sleeper, because there appeared to be a 13-year lull in the killings, Franklin met most of the women through random encounters that ended in murder. Significant blunders by the Los Angeles Police Department helped Franklin avoid arrest for years. He lived as the “serial killer next door,” even collecting a government pension.

Homicidal brings the reader into the action as Paul Alexander uses firsthand accounts and law enforcement documents to recreate dialogue and descriptions of key events. Employing the research and writing skills that have made Murdered and Accused among the all-time Kindle Singles favorites, Alexander has written a thriller that happens to be true. The story is set against the backdrop of long-needed changes in LAPD, serial killers in California, and the difficulties in building a prosecution against a suspect in a case as sprawling and complicated as this one.

In true crime, Paul Alexander is the bestselling author of the Kindle Singles Murdered and Accused—and now Homicidal. A leading journalist for many years, Alexander has published eight widely praised books—among them Rough Magic, a biography of Sylvia Plath; the bestseller Boulevard of Broken Dreams: The Life, Times, and Legend of James Dean; and Salinger: A Life—and over one hundred major articles for publications ranging from The New York Times to Rolling Stone.

Paul Alexander

Paul Alexander is the editor of the essay collection Ariel Ascending: Writings About Sylvia Plath and the author of Rough Magic, a biography of Plath; Boulevard of Broken Dreams: The Life, Times, and Legend of James Dean, the bestseller that has been published in 10 countries; Death and Disaster: The Rise of the Warhol Empire and the Race For Andy' s Millions; Man of the People: The Life of John McCain; The Candidate, a chronicle of John Kerry' s presidential campaign; and Machiavelli's Shadow: The Rise and Fall of Karl Rove. His bestseller Murdered was published by Rosetta Books as a Kindle Single.

A former reporter for Time, Alexander has published journalism in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, New York, The Nation, The Village Voice, Salon, Worth, The New York Observer, George, Cosmopolitan, More, Interview, ARTnews, Mirabella, Premiere, Out, The Advocate, Travel & Leisure, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, Biography, Men' s Journal, Best Life, The New York Review of Books, and Rolling Stone. In Europe, his journalism has appeared in Paris Match, Gente, and The Guardian. He contributes to The Daily Beast.

Shane Salerno' s much-anticipated feature documentary Salinger, due out this fall, is based on Alexander' s biography of J.D. Salinger, which has recently been republished. Alexander wrote Good Night, Dorothy Kilgallen, an original screenplay about Kilgallen' s investigation of the Kennedy assassination, for Twentieth Century Fox. With Sam Lansky, he has co-written King of Diamonds, an original screenplay about gem mogul Harry Winston.

Alexander is the author of the plays Strangers in the Land of Canaan and Edge, which he directed. Developed at The Actors Studio, Edge, the critically acclaimed one-woman play about Sylvia Plath, ran in New York, where Angelica Torn received an Outer Critics Circle Award nomination; London; and venues in other cities, among them Miami, where New Times named Torn Best Actress. Edge toured Australia and New Zealand and enjoyed a second run in New York. In all, Torn performed Edge 400 times.

A second company, Method Machine, has begun performing Edge. Alexander is also the director of a British revival of Ariel Dorfman' s play Death and the Maiden; New York Stories, an evening of one-act plays by Paul Kane that ran in New York; a stage revival of Dracula; and Brothers in Arms, a documentary film about John Kerry and Vietnam (First Run Features).

Alexander is a graduate of The Writers' Workshop at The University of Iowa and a member of PEN American Center, the Authors Guild, and the Playwrights and Directors Unit of The Actors Studio. In the fall of 2002, he was a Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He lives in New York City.

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