Classical serial killer fiction and films offer their readers or viewers many sources of pleasure: the control over disorder, the pleasure of pattern-discovering, the identification with a strong representative of the law, and of course the enjoyment, from the reader's secure position, of the murders as art or simply as an intellectual game. These narratives have the power of making us forget about ethics and the serious implications of murder, turning serial killing into a kind of aesthetic game that can be enjoyed as simple entertainment. However, what happens when ethics dominates over aesthetics in serial killer fiction? This question will find an answer through the analysis of Thomas Harris's The Silence of the Lambs (1988) and Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho (1991), both dealing with serial killers although in entirely different ways. **********
