Serial killers are the darlings of the press these days, and authors find these gruesome murderers equally attractive. Time for a new novel? Can't think of a topic? Serial killers provide guaranteed drama, trauma and public interest. Whoever says that there are no positive sides to America's love affair with the sordid obviously has never spoken to a writer of trashy thrillers.

Lew McCreary's second book, The Minus Man, capitalizes on this interest in a rather touching way. Considering its subject matter, this book is surprisingly civilized. The Minus Man, a first-person account, contains lots of sordid thoughts but very little gory detail. For example, the killer uses poison, a distinctly sanitary method of murder.

McCreary's psychotic murderer is a rather personable, average Joe named Vann Siegert. Siegert wanders inexplicably from Oregon to Massachusetts, aimlessly killing a man along the way. Once our psycho killer has arrived, he remains indecisive. Siegert moves into a house, develops a love affair and loses a job. He performs all these actions without seeming to take an active role in anything. Perhaps this apathy is the root of his psychosis.

Only in those moments when Siegert reflects upon his "most personal" action--choosing the victim, committing the deadly act or burying the remains--does he actually seem to take part in the decisions he makes and take responsibility for his actions. More than anyone else he reminds one of Camus' Stranger. The irony is that the Stranger was condemned because of his lack of emotion. As for Siegert, he seems immune to suspicion.

The problem in this book is that the sparse sentences, minimal descriptions and hesitant confessions which fill The Minus Man add up to virtually nothing. At the end of the book, after 200 pages and several months inside Siegert's head, the reader still remains unfamiliar with his character. We don't know him. He's barely an acquaintance.

Sure, the reader learns that Siegert's father watched him have sex and his mother was an alcoholic, that he thinks his brother was murdered and that he spent time in a mental institute. But that could have been culled from the book jacket, and the text does little more to enlighten us. The reader is left feeling that the work of paging through this novel, the time and the electricity for the light bulb, doesn't pay off.

Presumably the urge to read a serial killer thriller is based upon a wish to enter into the mind and life of a figure that one finds both frightening and repulsive in order to understand his motives and his methods. How does the murderer entice and entrap his victims? And, more importantly, why does he kill? McCreary fails to make Siegert intriguing to the reader or explain the killer's mysterious appeal to his prey.

Let's face it, most people who talk to a complete stranger, and certainly those who accept rides or drinks, do so for a reason. The person seems trustworthy and appealing. Aside from repetitive references to "the smile," (never expounded upon) and to the victims weaknesses' (which Siegert intuitively senses), McCreary gives his audience no explanation of how Siegert manages to kill with such ease. Don't we all know how to smile? And the weaknesses of a handicapped homeless man (one victim) require no telepathic powers to divine.

In sum, The Minus Man disappoints. What medium is better than a first-person narrative to satisfy the reader's yearning to explore an alien and fascinating persona? Even though the book switches between Siegert's thoughts on events he is in the process of experiencing and imaginations of his eventual confessions, the reader is given few hints as to the essential question of why this person is compelled to kill.

For example, when Siegert fantasizes of the eventual interrogation:

"When I look across the table at the faces of the bored, exhausted detectives, all I can truly see is how disgusted they are at the insignificant little troubles of my younger life. I imagine them thinking 'So what?'"

The reader of the book is compelled to agree with these imaginary detectives. In one's search to understand the mind of a serial killer, the daily newspaper supplies as much fertile material as does The Minus Man.