Serial killers have become the contemporary monsters par excellence. Under an appearance of normality, they are capable of going unnoticed among the rest of people. This is the starting point of the book El monstruo humano. Una introducción a la ficción de los asesinos en serie (The Human Monster: An Introduction to Serial Killer Fiction), which Isabel Santaularia, lecturer in the Department of English and Linguistics at UdL, has just published. The work examines more than 200 stories from literature, cinema and television that feature serial killers as their protagonists.

Santaularia highlights that characters like Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, the yuppie psychopath in American Psycho or the legendary Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street have become real icons of popular culture. The book penetrates the literary and cinematographic origins of narratives centred on this figure, dividing them into three subgenres: thrillers in which a detective investigates the crimes of a murderer; psycho-horror, which immerses in the mind of the monster; and "slasher films”, in which the psychopath eliminates the members of a group of teenagers.

The Human Monster: An Introduction to Serial Killer Fiction explores popular novels such as those by Patricia Cornwell, James Patterson, Jonathan Kellerman, Mo Hayder, Caleb Car, Ximo Cerdà or Manuel Manzano as well as TV series like Criminal Minds, Twin Peaks or Bones.