Waiting Period

Selby's latest offers a chilling look into the mind of a killer, as the author of Last Exit to Brooklyn uses stream-of-consciousness first-person narration to slowly transform his anonymous male narrator from a paranoid, disaffected war veteran into a deranged murderer. The catalytic event that initiates the transformation is the narrator's attempt to purchase a gun to commit suicide, but when a brief waiting period ensues, he decides instead to get even with his various tormentors. The first target is the bureaucrat at the Veterans Administration who has been denying the narrator his benefits, an alleged injustice he remedies by slipping the man a lethal dose of E. coli bacteria. The narrator goes through a brief period of killer's remorse, during which he almost confesses to a newsstand operator, but once his jitters pass, he targets a local TV celebrity for another dose of lethal bacteria. From there he goes completely over the edge, building a homemade crossbow as he explores the feasibility of using explosives to facilitate similar attacks in various cities around the country.