Word: ressler
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Long Island landscaper Joel Rifkin, who goes on trial this month for the death of 17 young women, is just a garden-variety killer. The man- eating Dahmer is the pick of the crop. "People are getting very morbidly involved in violence, especially violent sexual behavior," says criminologist Robert Ressler, who says he first coined the term serial killer 20 years ago when he worked in the FBI's behavioral-research branch. Americans now wallow in the horror and gore and take a guilty delight in killers' eluding capture. (Indeed, it is a chilling emulation of Gacy's reaction...
Back in the late 1950s, Stuart Ressler was one of the eager young scientists trying to crack the genetic code of the DNA molecule. In the mid-'80s, he works the night shift for a computer billing outfit in Brooklyn. What brought Ressler to this dead-end job? That is only one of the questions posed and answered by this demanding, dazzling novel. Also on display are two love stories, two intertwined narratives, vast erudition and a white-knuckled, suspense-filled investigation into the meaning of life...
Back in the late 1950s, Stuart Ressler was one of the eager young scientists trying to crack the genetic code of the DNA molecule. In the mid-'80s, he works the night shift for a computer billing outfit in Brooklyn. What brought Ressler to this dead-end job? That is only one of the questions posed and answered by this demanding, dazzling novel. Also on display are two love stories, two intertwined narratives, vast erudition and a white-knuckled, suspense-filled investigation into the meaning of life...
...surface, the solution looks like a question of decoding, the kind of feat that leads to the discovery of buried treasure in The Gold Bug. But Ressler is not so sure: "We are the by-product of the mechanism in there. So it must be more ingenious than us. Anything complex enough to create consciousness may be too complex for consciousness to understand." Further complicating his quest for pure knowledge, Ressler falls in love with Jeanette Koss, four years his senior, a married member of the Cyfer team. She gives him a present, a well-worn recording of the Goldberg...
...four main characters of the novel -- Jan and Todd, Jeanette and Ressler -- describe some dazzling, antiphonal permutations on their own. Both women are, for different reasons, unable to bear children; they are dedicated or interested onlookers at the mysteries of generation. Both men can be accounted failures, Ressler because he left a brilliant career and Todd because he lacks the nerve to begin one. But each is a welcome rarity in contemporary fiction: an intelligent, interesting and sympathetic actor in the drama of daily life...