Review: Survivor by K R Griffiths

This novel take on the serial killer plot didn’t quite hit the spot

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THIS is an interesting take on the serial killer story – told from the point of view of the killer. This gives us the opportunity to see how a person comes to be a serial killer.

We first meet Clive Barrett at work. Barrett is the perfect employee for his City bosses: quiet, successful, unassuming, he keeps to himself and doesn’t cause trouble. If anything the only problem is that he doesn’t join in enough, and in fact in these opening passages he is making his excuses and leaving his colleagues to their Friday night drinks. Barrett has other plans for his evening.

Barrett wants to be the most notorious serial killer the UK has ever seen. But there’s set to be a spanner in the works; one of his previous kills didn’t stay dead, and she wants revenge. Thus begins a deadly game of cat and mouse.

Barrett is a fledgling killer; he makes mistakes – the biggest of these leaving his new adversary alive. He tries to learn from these slip-ups. He has big plans. This is a completely different approach to the serial killer plot as I know it. The Dexter series of books is the only other story I know of that takes the serial killer as the main character. I haven’t read these but as far as I’m aware Dexter is already established as a very competent and deadly killer.

There is an awful lot of violence against women in the book. But it’s well handled. It can be easy for such stories to descend into misogynistic torture porn but Griffiths manages to avoid this.

So why only two stars? I don’t think we get enough into Barrett’s head – we don’t really understand why he’s a serial killer (unlike with, say, Dexter). Also the man is clearly a psychopath and it’s hard to have any kind of emotional connection to a character who himself is lacking emotions, even if it's just to dislike him. This is also my issue with Dexter and why I haven’t read it.

My main problem, though, is the ending. I found it deeply unsatisfying and unconvincing. I feel that Griffiths has sacrificed a realistic ending for the sake of a twist. And unfortunately I didn’t think the twist was that good. I won’t say what it is – you’ll just have to decide if you want to read the book!

For sake of clarity, I’m not comparing this book to the Dexter series, just using the latter as a reference.

I received this book as part of the GoodReads FirstReads scheme.

Update: the Jane Deep V sweater

Holiday knitting meant some serious time devoted to finishing off this long-standing project – as well as plenty of eating, drinking and reading

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Well, the Christmas break is well and truly over. Nine days of not having to get up and go to work, of time to just knit or read, of presents, food and family – bliss. I used a lot of it to really get on with some knitting. I’ve been working hard on the Jane Deep V sweater, and I’m almost at the sewing up stage (my least favourite part, but never mind).

Front, back and one sleeve are all knitted up and I’ve already blocked the front and back. Sleeve one is currently on the blocking board. Sleeve two is almost finished, too. I cast on for it just before Christmas and had hoped to finish it before heading back to work. I didn’t quite manage that, but I was close.

The Jane Deep V sweater on the blocking board.

As you can see from the photo above, this sweater has a really deep V neck (hence the name). I’m going to finish the V off with about 5cm of rib in the bright pink. Usually when I do the neckline on a sweater I sew one shoulder together and then pick up stitches around the whole thing, knitting the collar in one go. But I’m not sure if that will work on this sweater.

The depth of the neckline means I’m going to have to pick up a huge number of stitches along the two downstrokes of the V, and I simply don’t know if even my 100cm circular needle is going to be able to cope with that many stitches. If I don’t do it in this way, though, how am I going to make the bottom of the collar work properly?

Design is all about experimentation!

Normally with a V neck, you knit the collar in a single piece, using decreases at the bottom of the V to pull it in and preserve the V shape. If I have to knit the two sides separately I’m not sure how I’ll be able to replicate this.

The only thing I can think of is to pick up stitches down one side and along the bottom of the V, knit the 5cm collar and cast off, then pick up the stitches along the other side, knit the 5cm and cast off again. This will give me two separate pieces of collar, with the first side having an ‘extra’ bit from the stitches along the bottom of the V. This would then be sewn into the edge of the light pink section, covering the edge of the second layer of collar. But I don’t know if this will look as good a ‘normal’ single-piece collar. This really isn’t easy to visualise, so I’ve sketched it out. Badly. The first sketch below illustrates my usual way of knitting the collar; the second my alternative.

The top image demonstrates a 'normal' V neck,
while the above image shows my alternative.

I can see this neckline turning out to be something of a challenge. Even if I do manage to fit all the stitches on the needle, it’s going to involve an awful lot of picking up of stitches and then of knitting all those stitches to complete the collar. And then I may well end up picking up several hundred stitches only to find that I can’t fit them all on the needle and have to undo all I’ve done and start again. Oh well – design is all about experimentation after all!