Killer on the Road is a crime novel by American author James Ellroy. First published in 1986, it is a non-series book between the Lloyd Hopkins Trilogy and the L.A. Quartet. It was first released by Avon as a mass-market paperback original under the title Silent Terror, and has since been republished in the U.S. under Ellroy's original title Killer on the Road, first as a mass-market paperback in 1990 and later as a trade paperback in 1999. Killer on the Road returns to the first-person narrative style of Ellroy's first two novels. For the first time in Ellroy's career, however, the story is written from a criminal's point of view. The basic premise—a serial killer who uses a large van as a mobile killing room in which he murders hitchhikers—was apparently inspired by the case of Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris. As revealed in Ellroy's autobiography My Dark Places, several elements of the main character's young adult life (such as being a peeping tom and breaking into women's homes to steal undergarments) were lifted directly from Ellroy's own crimes as a juvenile. Plot summary Martin Plunkett is a child genius who comes from a broken home: His father is a hustler and his mother is a promiscuous substance abuser. After his parents divorce, Plunkett takes solace in a series of disturbing fantasies in which he re-assembles his classmates' body parts. These lead Plunkett to becoming a peeping tom; from the time he is seven until he turns eleven, he spends all of his free time spying on his neighbors and observing sexual encounters. Plunkett's teachers, having noticed his withdrawn nature in class, send him to the school psychologist, who identifies Plunkett as disturbed but nonetheless passes him to high school after Plunkett emotionally manipulates him into a fit of rage. In high school, Plunkett becomes obsessed with a series of comic books and fixates on the main villain, "Shroud Shifter", a jewel thief obsessed with becoming invisible. He comes to the conclusion that his own goal should become "invisibility" in the sense that he can move through life as nondescript as possible. He steals from his mother to finance a series of wardrobes which will allow him to blend in with as diverse a number of people as possible; when she punishes him, he switches her muscle relaxers with massive quantities of amphetamines, causing her to suffer a psychotic