3 days ago
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Aging is the real killer in Bay Area author's latest serial killer tale
According to popular fiction, being a serial killer is troublingly easy, a game played by people with near-supernatural intelligence and abilities. But Samantha Downing knows the truth. 'Killing people is hard work,' the Novato-born novelist says. 'Besides the actual physical work of murder, there's the cleanup and technology to deal with, along with setting up an alibi and dealing with the police. It's a young person's game.'
But while pop culture abounds with actively homicidal anti-heroes in the prime of their lives (look no further than the currently airing 'Dexter: Resurrection' for a slew of 'em), we hear less about killers in the senior set. This, even though America's aging population is one of the greatest social forces of our time.
Downing changes all that with 'Too Old For This,' her latest thriller. Like Hannibal Lecter, the arguable gold standard of killers for whom you root, Lottie Jones spent much of her youth killing people who were rude to her. Also like Lecter (who, based on his age in 'Silence of the Lambs' would be 84 today), she's a senior citizen, a 75-year-old with many of the infirmities that come with age.
So when Jones has to return to her old ways — this time, to keep her murderous past under wraps — it's a lot tougher than she expected. But unlike Lecter, Jones is willing to set aside her ego and sense of self to get what she wants. In her case, that means leaning into society's low expectations for the elderly to avoid suspicion, by feigning borderline dementia and adopting a walker-aided shuffle when under scrutiny.
'Lottie knows that older women are invisible in society,' Downing says. 'She isn't as physically capable as she used to be, and she uses it to her advantage the same way a lot of younger women act like they can't lift something or open a jar.'
A sharp woman's willingness to play the old and doddering crone has a rich history in crime fiction: Agatha Christie's famous detective, Miss Marple, is a great example of how ladies with grey hair are so frequently underestimated when murder is afoot. It's far rarer that we see imaginary men take that route, notes true crime author Sara DiVello, the interviewer behind YouTube series ' Mystery and Thriller Mavens.'
'When men know what they're doing — which often involves being dispassionate and calculating — people say they're strategic visionaries, they're geniuses. When women are capable, they're hated, they're feared. If you're too old to be cute, then you have to be unthreatening. You have to hide who you are if you want to get ahead. It's infuriating'
Like DiVello, Lottie has been enraged by this inequity for years, often to the point of murder. So there's a pleasant symmetry to how she turns that bias to her advantage when she has to start killing again.
The idea for a less able killer came to Downing during a health crisis of her own. 'I was always really healthy and fit,' the 56-year-old says. But a serious illness temporarially limited her mobility.
'I couldn't be active, and had to adapt and adjust to a new reality. I hated it and was so angry, so I channeled it all into Lottie. I'd been writing a different story about a much younger protagonist who didn't have any of these problems, and I threw it all away.'
Downing, who has since made a full recovery, says the experience provided her with an important subtext for her book. 'I like to use serial killing as a vehicle to tell a story,' she says, citing filmmaker George Romero, whose 'Night of the Living Dead' series revolutionized the horror genre. 'He used to say that the zombies don't matter, and that he's interested in telling a human story about how people react to the zombies.'
So for Downing, 'This isn't a thriller about serial killers. This is a thriller about aging,' with Lottie's dismemberments of various victims broken up by visits to the doctor for medication adjustments, joint pain, and conflicts with members of her church group. Sure, fears that she might get caught hang over Lottie every step of the way, but so do her worries over how long she can live independently — and what she'll do when she can't.
Downing's unflinching look at the specific anxieties faced by a woman who is aging alone is unusual for the genre, and it's a telling reveal of societal biases that Lottie's sometimes-desperate calculations around how long she can afford to keep living are some of the most unsettling in the book. Most of us can talk about murder all day long. It's entertainment, right? But far fewer of us make cocktail party chit-chat about how those last years before one's natural end of life might play out.
In many ways, the same skills that made Lottie a successful killer are what will help her navigate that time most of us prefer not to think about. 'She can look directly at things that most people want to avoid,' Downing says. 'That's one of the benefits of being a sociopath. You know how to make a really, really good plan.'
