Killer Stories: Conversations With South African Serial Murderers by Brin Hodgskiss and Nicole Engelbrecht is out this month from Jonathan Ball Publishers.

‘If you made me angry, to me, for that anger to go away I have to get hold of you … For that anger to go away, I have to do something to you.’

These are the words of one of South Africa’s most terrifying serial killers as told to Brin Hodgskiss in the bowels of one of our most secure prisons.

Hodgskiss got his doctorate in psychology for a study based on interviews with 13 serial killers. The recordings sat gathering dust until recently, when top true-crime podcaster Nicole Engelbrecht found his paper online. The two connected and the concept for this book was born.

‘This revolutionises South African true crime … an uprecedented look into the minds of serial murderers, told in their own chilling words.’ – Jana Marx, author of The Krugersdorp Cult Killings

In Killer Stories, Hodgskiss uses each of the interviews, combined with the tenets of narrative psychology, to take the reader into the minds of the killers. He lays out how the stories these men told themselves about their lives contributed to where they ended up – and how they aren’t that different from the stories we all tell ourselves.

The book intertwines the killers’ versions of the truth and the true crime stories behind them, an interpretation of the tales using narrative psychology, and how Hodgskiss’s own journey as a psychologist and human being contributed to his deeper understanding of the minds of these killers.

About the authors

Brin Hodgskiss was born and raised in Johannesburg and has worked with the SA and UK police on investigations tackling everything from burglary and terrorism to murder and rape. He has published in international journals, as well as presented academically, and on TV and radio, on the topic of serial murder. He works in England’s National Health Service and is a freelance consultant in the psychology of storytelling.

Nicole Engelbrecht is the creator and host of one of SA’s biggest podcasts, True Crime South Africa, and is the author of Samurai Sword Murder: The Morne Harmse Story.

Categories Non-fiction South Africa

Tags Brin Hodgskiss Jonathan Ball Publishers Killer Stories New books New releases Nicole Engelbrecht