EricCWelch

Gibson can't be considered part of the American Noir genre because he's British, but his work shows definite influence of Thompson and Highsmith. The Sandman is the story of a serial killer, a man who kills because he enjoys it. He picks his victims randomly, his only criteria being that they look forlorn and unhappy and he is doing them a favor by removing them from the toils of this life. He rationalizes his murderous behavior by comparing his few victims to the inordinate number of those killed through "acts of God." "You could call me a butcher but electric toasters kill more in a year than I could manage in a lifetime. There are men who . . . walk into the office each morning and get paid to dream of new ways to destroy the world. . . Let's have some lunch and think about radiation sickness. I frighten you because I work on a human scale . . . . But there are nightmares in the world so grand that your head could not contain them." Ironically, the turning point in his life comes when an old girlfriend is killed by her husband, a butcher. Not for the faint-hearted.