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 earlier life. Kahn is a psychiatrist with twenty-three years professional…
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Citation: Tredell, Nicolas. "The Killer (aka Lingard)". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 25 September 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=23934, accessed 27 November 2024.]
