The feminist serial killer novel: A subgenre of contemporary global crime fiction

With increasing intensity, the twenty-first century has ushered in a new subgenre of the feminist, woman serial killer story. Undoubtedly, and in no small part related to the rise of podcasts, as well as the growing interest in historical crime and true crime, the success of television shows and films, this small (perhaps niche) but wide-ranging subgenre has yet to be fully explored. In this article, I will begin to explore the feminist woman serial killer novel. I will argue that this global subgenre is characterized by narrative and feminist features in relation to murder, motive, and the genre of crime fiction itself. I will base this study on four novels: Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer (2019), Asako Yuzuki’s Butter (2017), Perihan Mağden’s Escape (2012), and Katy Brent’s How to Kill Men and Get Away with It (2023), which have remarkable similarities, despite being written and set in disparate cultures and different languages. The woman serial killer novel can be understood as subversive of the (masculinist) conventions of crime fiction and radical in its representation of serial murder. This article will examine how these novels convey their feminist narratives in response to conventions in previous male-focused serial killer fiction, mobilizing new conventions and aesthetics to establish a feminist perspective.