title: I: The Creation of a Serial Killer
author:  Jack Olsen 
description: Veteran true-crime writer Olsen (Salt of the Earth, etc.) takes the profiling of a psychopath a step farther than usual; drawing on interviews and his subject's own diaries to intimately reveal the life and inner workings of Keith Hunter Jesperson, currently serving life in prison for the murders of eight women in the 1990s. Jesperson was called the "Happy Face Killer" for his token symbol on taunting letters sent to authorities. Cutting between Jesperson's rough rural childhood in the Pacific Northwest (with a hard-drinking, belt-swinging father who put him to work and charged room and board), and his mad glee in hunting down, raping and strangling women, the book plays more like a carefully detailed autobiography than a neutral investigation. While the gruesome details are nailed down with morbid precision, some readers may be disturbed by Olsen's abandonment of the objective narrator's voice in chapters where the first-person account puts the reader right inside the madman's mind it's a distinctly unpleasant place, where women are "lot lizards" and "bitches" paraded toward rape and death. Even chapters in the third person clearly represent Jesperson's viewpoint. Olsen's writing is clear and concise, but the voyeurism of the murder scenes will disturb some readers, and the attempt to create understanding of a serial murderer might be interpreted by others as an attempt to create sympathy. Eight pages b&amp;w photos not seen by PW.<br />Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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  PRAISE FOR IF YOU TELL
  
  
  “There’s only one writer who can tell such an intensely horrifying, psychotic
  tale of unspeakable abuse, grotesque torture, and horrendous serial murder
  with grace, sensitivity, and class . . . a riveting, taut, real-life
  psychological suspense thrill ride . . . all at once compelling and original,
  Gregg Olsen’s If You Tell is an instant true crime classic.”
  
  
  — _New York Times_ bestselling author M. William Phelps
  
  
  “We all start life with immense promise, but in our first minute, we cannot
  know who’ll ultimately have the greatest impact on our lives, for better or
  worse. Here, Gregg Olsen—the heir apparent to legendary crime writers Jack
  Olsen and Ann Rule—explores the dark side of that question in his usual
  chilling, heart-breaking prose. Superb and creepy storytelling from a true-
  crime master.”
  
  
  —Ron Franscell, author of _Alice & Gerald: A Homicidal Love Story_
  
  
  “Bristling with tension, gripping from the first pages, Gregg Olsen’s
  maste