Colin Wilson, The Killer (aka Lingard)

Nicolas Tredell (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kerry Myler (Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1970

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

In his tenth novel, The Killer (1970), Colin Wilson combines his narrative skills and his encyclopaedic knowledge of true crime to produce a powerful study of how Arthur Lingard, a fictional character based on a variety of factual sources, became a multiple murderer. The first English edition was cut, but a fuller version appeared in the USA in 1970 under Wilson's original title, Lingard, and a text which is claimed to be the most complete was published by Savoy Books in 2001 (Stanley (2006), 68). The novel's narrator, Samuel Kahn, provides a first-person account of his own fascination with Lingard and his quest for the sources of Lingard's crimes, and a third-person reconstruction of some key aspects of Lingard's …

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4972 words

Citation: Tredell, Nicolas. "The Killer (aka Lingard)". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 25 September 2008 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=23934, accessed 26 November 2024.]

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