Word: siegert
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Based on the 1990 cult crime novel by Lew McCreary, The Minus Man tells the story of mild and childlike Vann Siegert (Bottle Rocket's Owen Wilson), an ostensibly kind, offenseless man. He's so nauseatingly likable and law-abiding (even when driving onto a deserted highway he makes a point of using a signal and looking both ways), you'd never suspect him of having any violent tendencies. He's perfect. Eerily perfect. All right, you guessed it--he's a serial killer; a bona fide psycho (how could someone who uses their blinker on a deserted highway...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...example, when Siegert fantasizes of the eventual interrogation...