Our always friendly author frankly admits: blood baths relax you more than any hot stone massage. Every now and then she still wonders if she has a shadow.
Sometimes I imagine that my apartment would be stormed by a task force and an analysis of my inner life would be made based on the evidence. Rows of books in which people are dismembered, scalped or locked up in a pressure chamber for years. Thriller series full of bestial murders and eviscerated corpses on DVDs (yes, I confess, my passion is older than Netflix!), Whose covers are so pitch black that the squeaky-colored "Pumuckl" film that slides in between seems almost brutal.
I also have the complete archive of all "Crime" magazines. Naturally. And if I were still a teenager, I would support the "Bravo" for the star cut by Jo Nesbø, have the film poster of "Seven" hanging over the bed and maybe even a tattoo by Jussi Adler-Olsen on the rump. Sure, the result of the investigation would be devastating: serious personality disorder, a danger to others and to yourself, off to preventive detention!
Murderous women
This thirst for blood scares me. Even if I now know that it is a typical female phenomenon. Sebastian Fitzek, one of my pop idols of literary sadism, estimates the proportion of women among his readers at 80 percent. "There are women who write to me that I could put a shovel on top of that when I pay blood," he once said. At least I'm still trying to be interested in other things than ritual murders and satanic executions, to be captivated by a historical novel or to find a light summer comedy good. But it doesn't work: For me there is nothing better than to feed my lust for fear behind double-locked doors.
Many of my friends feel the same way. On wine-heavy evenings at the Italian, we prefer to talk about notorious serial killers rather than Tinder dates and husbands. We are strangely fascinated by dark abysses. And from the question: Are people the way they appear to be? Or does the friendly vegetable man, who always gives me two tangerines for the children with every purchase, knocked me down behind with a fruit box, cut me up with a chainsaw in the bathtub and buried my body in his allotment?
Particularly worrying: the victims are mostly female.
What I find particularly worrying: The victims in my dark entertainment program are mostly female. Is that self-loathing I live out there? Anything pathological about my mother? According to psychotherapist and neurologist Dr. Sabine Schwachula, however, has a cathartic effect, it is more about exploring your own fear: "We women tend to process our fears psychologically. We go to therapy quicker – or read crime novels, to cover our book covers To explain anger. " Men are crowding out, racing on the highway or actually picking up a filleting knife.
Self therapy?
That's how I work with my disturbing hobby very intensely on me and my soul hygiene. But Charles Manson instead of mindfulness meditation and singing bowl therapy? Well, I do recognize parallels here: in both of these, whoever has settled in comfortably on the homely lounging area gets particularly deep. "It takes leisure and security to fill the world with crime novels. I don't think there is a single person reading crime novels in Syria at the moment," explains Sabine Schwachula of this phenomenon of prosperity. The question: "Are you still okay?" in view of such a blood-drenched quirk, it is more than appropriate. And the answer can only be: "Yes, far too good!" Because only those who have no real fears can go crazy with this sick shit like me.
Agatha Christie was her first encounter with criminal energy. When Lena Schindler was 13, she loved the black and white films with Miss Marple.
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