Reviews and Comments

My main issues include: The translator decided to use the sentence "She was a Japanese," which I'm surprised wasn't updated in newer versions but... okay. The naming conventions are inconsistent (sometimes last name-first name, other times first name-last name). There's an obvious failure of the translator to know what a child of an American would call their own mother when speaking English (even though this is a well-known difference, and it would've been true in the mid-century setting and when it was translated in the 80s), which is just a little obnoxious. But these are largely just small picks.

What I really think this book suffers from is improper marketing. Its inclusion as a 'mystery' book is correct, but I think its constant description as a 'classic mystery' and being marketed next to things that do fit 'classic mystery' does nothing to really help it. This is because a 'classic mystery' to most people who engage in mysteries is to see it in the realm of there being a detective who you follow with an obvious crime to solve as you do, and this book isn't... that.

And that's fine. But the marketing team at Pushkin Vertigo really need to understand what the book is in order to help it properly find its audience... Especially when they're marketing it to people who enjoyed reading their other translated mystery novels, which are... very different from this.

I also think this book is misunderstood by people who read it (which can stem from the improper marketing), and I'm saying this because of how many people I've seen complain of its tell-over-show quality. The way the story is told is... through telling because the events of the crime have already happened long ago in the past for the characters. You're not following the 'mystery' of the kidnapped child of seven years ago, and that kidnapped child is not really the most important part of the story. He is an important part, but he and his kidnapping are not the core of the story. They are solvable elements, but they're not the point.

The focus is on the loneliness of 'spinster' women. There's a reason it takes place in an apartment block entirely dedicated to the lives of young women (and later older women). It's about the ways in which society completely neglects and overlooks their lives, especially once they're no longer "useful" to society. It's about what loneliness, especially under a variety of circumstances, can drive people to do (even in a very negative form). It's about how we can misunderstand the people around us because, rather than engage with them directly, we're encouraged to gossip and skirt around issues. It's about the assumptions we make of other people using what little evidence we have. Hell, it's even about the grief of loss and how that can negatively impact people.

I originally complained that this book was more like creepy vignettes than a mystery novel, but that 'creepy vignette' structure had a point. It was to show the reader all of these people, everything they do in their loneliness and grief and vanity and... whatever. We're being shown who these people are and what they're driven to do and why they're driven to do it.

The mystery itself is secondary, and that's... fine.

The Kindaichi Kosuke series of books is currently one of my favourite, especially as it does a lot within the genre that typically goes undone. Something that I noticed this time around and was able to ruminate on was that a lot of the books still hold a degree of humanity for the murderer, even when they clearly don't support their behaviour. This is something that I appreciate because it really does highlight that people can and do horrible things but that they're still people (which I think actually makes them more terrifying instead of less terrifying).

I point this out because it's something that is done in the solution to the case, and it's something that I frequently find myself wanting to see more of because I think it's best that we not separate ourselves too much from these horrible people (as in, we can definitely separate ourselves ideologically, but we shouldn't be doing it on a species-wide level... something I've also noticed with real-world politics and problems).

Anyway, it's engaging as always. The translator does a wonderful job, and all of these books feel like they've been written from one person (even though they've all largely been translated by a handful of different people).

This book was actually quite surprising. It was less surprising for the solution and the mystery itself, but I wasn't expecting for a mystery novel to kind of tackle the idea of 'outsiders' and the supposed suspicious nature of people within a small town while also recognising that there are different cultures within the same country that impact how we think and behave.

Rather, I was more surprised because the handling of the issue wasn't immediately structured in a way to make all the 'small town' people inherently unlikable, unintelligent, or 'beneath' the protagonist (which is something that is annoyingly common in texts that utilise this structure). This is actually something that Yokomizo's books seem to handle well because Kindaichi never seems to hold himself above the people he's around. The locals are shown to be somewhat suspicious and cautious, friendly to a point, but with some still believing that the 'outsiders' can never really understand them or the people they've lived with.

I also really like the ways in which superstition is utilised and discussed. This was also another surprise for me because, again, I'm so used to texts that utilise superstition in a way that makes in feel disconnected from the story and the people. This made it feel really authentic to the story and like something you could actually interact with, question, and understand. It wasn't taken for granted, and it showed how even some people who weren't really superstitious could still find themselves falling into the trap of 'fate'.

This is a book that overstays its welcome, though I do feel like that's kind of the point.

Split into two parts (or 'books'), the first one is far more engaging than the second. Perhaps it's because all of the action for what transpires happens in the first book. You see the frustration and the conspiracy between the primary characters, and it finally culminates in what every other character in the book believes to be a tragic "accident."

The second part basically unravels those primary characters, both for the reader and for the characters. But this is where it feels like it overstays everything, and I stopped caring about any of what was happening. I had to force myself to finish this bit, and I felt compelled because I was already so far into the book. It was a slog.

This isn't helped because, at no point, are any of these characters really interesting people who you can like. They're all entirely unlikable, but it's unlikable in a way that a person sees a particularly rotten politician. You don't want to follow their movements, but you're compelled to because of external forces. Many of them aren't interesting, though I also feel that this is the point. These characters are incredibly shallow and perceive superficial but grand gestures as being the only way through a problem.

Probably the most interesting bit of the second 'book' is the part where the protagonist starts to believe that his actions were part of the plan all along, even when he didn't recognise it as being something that could so easily be controlled. But so many threads of interest were used in ways that were entirely underwhelming or felt completely dropped, and that was one.

While I won't say that I hated The Decagon House Murders (because it was enjoyable), this book is so much better than that one. I think this is where he really got a feeling for the 'detective' character Shimada Kiyoshi (who isn't really a detective) and using his other characters to actually feel more part of the crime and the story itself.

He also does a better job at using the house gimmick in this book, since that's a key component of the stories in the Bizarre House Murders series. Every house in the books is built by the same architect: Nakamura Seiji. This architect is really well-known for including gimmicks in houses, like secret passages or hidden rooms. Sometimes the owners of the house know about them, other times they don't; it's said that he does it in a way that's kind of like a prank.

Anyway, I really like the inclusion of characters just going having one of two reactions. One is to be like, "Wait, this is a Nakamura Seiji house? Shit." The other is for them to be like "What makes Nakamura Seiji so special to you weirdos?"

This book is overwhelmingly engaging, though there were areas where I felt frustrated reading it. Sometimes there were moments where it felt like the characters suddenly and briefly forgot themselves, and there were other parts that I felt were somewhat unnecessary in their narrative use. Some of that comes down to personal choice.

There are a lot of story threads in this book, and some of them felt a bit too excessive. The thread about Eva (one of the main characters) and her husband Jimmy basically being married but struggling to connect was good, along with all the things that basically helped create that division. But it felt overburdened when another character, who charmed his way into Eva's sights, comes in and uses her for information. I kind of feel like that could've been done in another way that would've felt more cohesive to the story and more coherent with Eva's character.

Or, to put it another way, none of that feels like an 'earned' story? It just feels like padding that could've been replaced with something more fitting. Like, while the story does involve an aspect of 'the things men make women do for them' in so many ways, it really just felt like it disconnected Eva into the only woman (other than Zina) in her whole life. And like, that can be a good narrative thread, it just makes it feel like all Eva's moments are being suspicious of and confused by men, wondering why they won't do anything. This is something that I personally wasn't a fan of.

I also have mixed feelings because this story is based very closely (but not tightly) on a real-life murder by a Cypriot grandmother who had moved to England and was charged with killing her daughter-in-law. Many of the details do match what happened, including the fact that the grandmother spoke no English and was illiterate in Greek. This was also a core part of the story, but I felt it kept getting lost. And sometimes it felt like it was getting undermined by other parts of the story.

No, I take that back. It did one thing valuable for Derf Backderf, and that's give him some prizes and name recognition off the back of his so-called "friendship." This book is a cash-grab, pure and simple... Honestly, it's a bit too obvious of one, and if this book was written about a subject who wasn't as heinous as Jeffrey Dahmer, it would've never received the acclaim (or movie adaptation) that it did.

I read this book because I saw it on the dubious wishlist of a person claiming to be a special education teacher, seeking donations for her classroom. I'm kind of mortified that a person working with disabled children would want to have this portrayal in their classroom because of how uncritical it is for all the ableism in it, along with how it seems to support the ostracisation of people deemed as "strange." But if I also consider my many searches to corroborate things that Backderf claimed happen in this book, I find a ridiculous number of Quizlets made by teachers who apparently teach this book. (And some of the questions on those Quizlets are a bit... fucking weird, following in the steps of this book. Like giving your students an online quiz that casually just tosses suicide out in the same manner of the book.)

Here's a short list (with lengthy explanations) of things that I found problematic within the book, which Backderf either fails to engage with or tries (and fails) to explain away:

First, there is an incredible amount of unchallenged ableism that is presented in the text. In the 'notes' for the book, he tries to defend it as "just how people were." In a blog post that I found (which he wrote during the filming of the movie adaptation), he claims people cried foul but that he thinks it's because they "just don't understand how teenagers actually were" or "remember how hateful they were as adolescents" and that he was "writing himself and his friends with brutal reality." I'm paraphrasing, of course. The problem here is that his narrator has a lot of future-knowledge that Teen Backderf would never have had, so I don't understand why Narrator Backderf doesn't take the time to slag himself off for being the shit he clearly was (since, as he claims in the notes, he and his friends feel "such shame" about what they did).

By the way, the things they did? Were to call up a man with cerebral palsy and mock him, recording the prank phone calls they did to him. They paid Dahmer to do a "command show" at the mall, which the planned together and took him there to perform his mockery of the physical mannerisms and speech patterns of a person with cerebral palsy (the same guy, btw, that the four band kids were prank calling). They used "Dahmerisms" throughout their speech and in their school newspaper and yearbook, which were included them mocking Dahmer as he mocked people with cerebral palsy. That's what he shows in "brutal reality" with zero challenge to the behaviours at all. These are the kinds of scenes presented in the book. They are not challenged in the text in any meaningful way. I don't know how you can "be ashamed" of what you did and present these without any kind of challenge or self-reflection.

Second, there is a constant focus on how Joyce 'Rocky' Dahmer was the worst parent and was at fault for her son's heinous crimes. This is a massively misogynist trope, and it is one that is still pervasive thanks to all the retellings. Joyce was known for having mental health struggles and working through them; she was known for struggling with what her son did (and I can't blame her). People who knew her said that she was immensely sympathetic to Dahmer's victims and that she absolutely despised people who tried to make money off of her or her son. She felt the memoir her ex-husband wrote was full of lies (and it probably was, as he called her a hypochrondriac and a germaphobe... but she was an HIV/AIDs counsellor in the fucking 90s, when everyone else wrongly claimed that HIV/AIDS patients shouldn't be touched). She is presented in some of the most ableist and misogynist light, and it is... disgusting.

His father barely receives any of the same criticisms. He's barely in this story because, as Backderf claims in notes, he was "barely around when Backderf was." Considering (and I'll cover this more later) the primary question Backderf has is "Where were the adults," it seems very interesting that Lionel Dahmer didn't come under the same scrutiny that Joyce did. (There's a lot of excusing of this because "at the time," mothers were just at home more and fathers were at work more. So what? Doesn't that just mean that a person can presume that fathers were more negligent? Oh, wait...)

Third, it focuses far too much on "where were the adults." Backderf answers this a number of times in his own narrative (his parents were in the middle of a bad marriage and messy divorce, they apparently argued a lot), but he also contradicts himself with his own notes. He says that "no teacher ever caught Dahmer drinking" in the narrative, but then he has a note saying that Dahmer was caught at least once (and then became far more careful after the fact). He outlines how it was more normal for teachers to ignore contraband outside the school rather than inside the school. He ignores that sometimes it's difficult for teachers to do anything (because the school system won't let you, sometimes parents don't believe you, sometimes you think it might put the kid in more danger if you do tell... there's a lot of factors, but that doesn't mean that people don't help).

Now, as a school abolitionist teacher who recognises many of the flaws, I'm not here to fully defend teachers. But I do think this nuance of how hard it can be to ensure that people are safe... is completely ignored. It's not an easy task, and the systems of the world that we live in make it complicated intentionally.

Also, Jeffrey Dahmer was a white boy growing up in a white supremacist country; that gave him a lot of cover for his teenage behaviour, which also explains the constant "I didn't notice anything wrong with him" that Backderf experienced when he interviewed teachers who were at his school during his time as a student. This is something Backderf doesn't acknowledge in any capacity. He also ignores that he's talking about the 1970s. There's lot of "of the time" excuses, but this one seems to get written out here for some reason. If Dahmer had told anyone about what was supposedly in his head, what kind of response would he have gotten? Narrator Backderf with the future-knowledge ignores this entirely.

Fourth, I don't think Backderf was ever really friends with Dahmer. I think he considered Dahmer a friend after the fact or rewrote his own history to make it seem that way. But the narrative repeatedly shows that Dahmer was outside of his friends group, that they didn't really like him, that they viewed him as disposable, that they wanted to use him for their own amusement. That is not friendship. Hell, in the text, Backderf says that Dahmer was "more like a mascot" to them than a friend. This is a message that is repeated over and over and over again, yet the title of this book is My Friend Dahmer and not We Bullied Dahmer or My Mascot Dahmer.

Much of what was written about their friendship and how they interacted honestly comes off as bullying, and I think it's fair that (if Backderf is going to start blaming people for the stalking and carefully planned murders of vulnerable people by an adult Dahmer on "Where were the adults" logic) we ask questions about the impacts of Backderf and his other band friends pretending to befriend someone—who they routinely left out of activities because they saw him as too weird or possibly because they'd be embarrassed by his antics anywhere else but school or paying him to do it at the mall—and then later dropping and ostracising him.

It doesn't get better as you go along, either. After you read or skip past all the sources and notes about the sources and a weird biography of Dahmer written in the style of being Backderf's memoir, there are two pages of comic panels revealing how Backderf found out about Dahmer's heinous murders. These are written in the same style of the after-credits scene of a Marvel movie, which comes off a little tasteless. The most petty argument I have for this section is that Backderf says "thirteen years later" on the first one, which it is thirteen years from 1978... But the panels in his story ended in 1988, which is three years later. This is just one more example that he doesn't pay attention to his own writing and narrative. But the most egregious part is that he portrays his wife as playing a game of Guess Who with him. She relays the core details of what Dahmer did to him and is like "He went to Revere! He was in your class!" Character Backderf is shown being like "What!?! Who!?!" To this, his wife simply says "Guess!" This is another hint to me that Backderf did this as a cash-grab for having been in the same proximity as Dahmer and for having actually used and mistreated Dahmer (according to his own text). He was not friends with this guy. If it were true, this Guess Who game off the back of sensationalised details of Dahmers gruesome murders makes his wife come off as a heartless person. It's shown in the same way that a person would do it after running into someone they hadn't seen in ages down at the grocer, but because of the subject matter? And the claim that he was Dahmer's friend? It comes off as insensitive and rude.

Anyway, Backderf (good friend that he is, I guess) plays along with his wife in her silly game of "Guess Which of Your Classmates Murdered Seventeen of People." He first guesses someone else! "Uh, no, it's not him." Then he guesses Dahmer! The narration for this ridiculous Marvel scene in 1991 is like "That's right, Dahmer was my second guess!" I can't tell if this is him trying to be like "Yeah, I did so well guessing that on my second try," but it reads that way considering everything else.

Fifth, there's a random and unexplained scene where Backderf is dressed as Hitler doing a comedy sketch? Which Backderf assures us was very funny. I don't think the reference lands or that it would've landed even in 2012 because I sure as fuck didn't get it, and I had just started elementary school when Dahmer was caught (just to point out my age). I think, based on searching, it relates to an incredibly not funny joke about Hitler still being alive and found by some neo-nazis in Argentina, but... the rest of my search kept taking me to neo-nazi memes, and that was making me incredibly angry and sick. The most logical conclusion I can come to is that it's such a scene put in for shock-value and edge, not for any real narrative purpose. "Oh, haha, I was once dressed as Hitler for a school variety show and was talking to Dahmer." If anything, it makes me question Backderf, too. (This is even more true once you remember that this story takes place in Ohio, and Ohio has frequently had major issues with both the KKK and Nazis. Which usually overlaps. Like, along a major highway, there are the burnt remnants of the white crosses of the KKK. In some cities and towns, they even were allowed to donate crosses to Christmas decorations, with "donated by the KKK" plastered on them. This was in my lifetime.)

Sixth, there's a scene that takes place roughly in the summer of 1976. Dahmer is fishing at the lake behind his "friend" Neil's house at the "man-made lake" his father put in after they moved in. While waiting for a fish to bite, Backderf just casually portrays Neil talking about a girl's suicide (in somewhat graphic tones), only for him to finish by saying he didn't get it because she had a "cute bod." The inclusion of this is fucking weird and doesn't... really do much; it's entirely out of nowhere, it's portrayed in a really heartless manner, and there is no narrative purpose for it. Just because something happened doesn't mean it has to be included. The "brutal reality" Backderf portrays is just constantly doing something to be a little bit edgy about his "friendship" with Dahmer, regardless of his own defenses otherwise.

Anyway, almost immediately after that conversation, Dahmer catches a fish. Neil had told him to throw it back, but Dahmer straight up slaughters it (supposedly, as this is a recollection from Neil's memory and not corroborated anywhere else). Ironically, based on proximity and time alone, the book presents Neil as more of a friend in fewer scenes than Backderf can present himself as one in an entire book. (And if you read the notes, you find out that Neil's parents and Lionel Dahmer were apparently pretty good friends, supporting that idea a little more.)

Overall, the nicest thing I can say about this book is that it's a revision of a personal history. He claims it's a "memoir," but it feels like he's revising how he was as a teenager and what he knew as a teenager using information he learned after 1991. He started working on his stories in 1994, after Dahmer was murdered. He self-published a 24-page version of this that he was unhappy with because it was "too short," but he was very happy with all the acclaim and the awards it won. The preface of this book really sets a person up to be cynical about why this book was written, which isn't helped by the constant insistence that Dahmer was his friend but the portrayal that he was nothing more than someone to be used.

If the subject matter were an ordinary person, we would rightly recognise this as bullying and harassment. But since the subject matter is someone who we're already primed to despise (no matter how much the author claims we should be sympathetic), we don't see the author's portrayed antics in his "memoir" of being Dahmer's friend as being harmful in any way. Since we know Adult Dahmer committed horrible acts, we project that knowledge onto the Teenage Dahmer in the book (who hadn't, for the majority of the story, killed anyone). Literally every scene where Backderf and his band friends are essentially bullying or harassing Dahmer is a scene where he was innocent of the crimes he would later commit.

... This book is disgusting.