Review; Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original "Psycho" by Harold Schechter

Recently, I read the non-fiction book Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original "Psycho" by Harold Schecter, and today I'll post my review of the book.

Description from Goodreads
Murder Was the Least of His Crimes…

The truth behind the twisted crimes that inspired the films Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs…

From Harold Schechter, “America's principle chronicler of its greatest psychopathic killers” (The Boston Book Review), comes the definitive account of Ed Gein, whose ghoulish crimes stunned an unsuspecting nation.

The year is 1957. Photographs would show him across the country: a slight, Midwestern man with a twisted little smile, a man who had lived for ten years in his own world of murder and depravity.

Here is the grisly true story of Ed Gein, the killer whose fiendish fantasies inspired Alfred Hitchcock's “Psycho”—the mild-mannered farmhand bound to his domineering mother, driven into a series of gruesome and bizarre acts beyond all imagining. In chilling detail, Deviant explores the incredible career of one of the most twisted madmen in the annals of American crime—and how he turned a small Wisconsin farmhouse into his own private playground of ghoulishness and blood.

From the Heartland of America comes a true story more horrifying than any movie or novel…Harold Schechter's acclaimed true-crime chronicle…

DEVIANT

My Thoughts on the Book
As Psycho is one of my favourite Hitchcock movies, I obviously couldn't resist reading this one, and one thing for sure, it shows that reality can be more spine-chilling than fiction at times. While the book is a bit outdated in terms of mental health topics, it still illustrates well how and why Ed Gein turned out the way he did. Mothers aren't always a boy's best friend to put it that way.


If you're into true crime, especially serial killers, or love classical horror movies such as Texas Chain Saw Massacre or Hitchcock's Psycho it just might be worth the read.

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