Joyce Carol Oates

After Quentin P, a convicted sex offender, is paroled, he embarks on a series of murders, in a chilling book that is told from Quentin's point of view as he kills and eludes the police. Reprint.

Zombie

Jane McCullough

Oates definitely achieves what I suppose would be an authentic voice of a serial killer. About the time this book was published, I attended a lecture given by Oates at the Huntington Library. As I remember, Oates had just finished research for a book review about a real serial killer. Oates depth of research, including interviews with an FBI profiler convinced her of the aberration of the mind of such a horrific criminal. I'm sure Q's character is a reflection of what Oates learned.

Zombie is a classic novel of dark obsession from the extraordinary Joyce Carol Oates. A brilliant, unflinching journey into the mind of a serial killer, Zombie views the world through the eyes of Quentin P., newly paroled sex offender, as he chillingly evolves from rapist to mass murderer. Joyce Carol Oates—the prolific author of so many extraordinary bestsellers, including The Gravediggers Daughter, Blonde, and The Falls—demonstrates why she ranks among America’s most respected and accomplished literary artists with this provocative, breathtaking, and disturbing masterwork.

A Novel

Rowan Myers

Giovanni Garcia-Fenech 

Lauren Downs 

Meet Quentin P. He is a problem for his professor father and his loving mother, though of course they do not believe the charge (sexual molestation of a minor) that got him in that bit of trouble. He is a challenge for his court-appointed psychiatrist, who nonetheless is encouraged by the increasingly affirmative quality of his dreams and his openness in discussing them. He is a thoroughly sweet young man for his wealthy grandmother, who gives him more and more, and can deny him less and less. He is the most believable and thoroughly terrifying sexual psychopath and killer ever to be brought to life in fiction, as Joyce Carol Oates achieves her boldest and most brilliant triumph yet—a dazzling work of art that extends the borders of the novel into the darkest heart of truth.