In 1997, when Lynn Crosbie's fictionalized history of the events, Paul's Case, was first released, some booksellers and librarians, particularly in areas where the crime spree occurred, refused to put the book on their shelves. To some extent this is due to Crosbie's ability to imagine her way into the minds of those involved. The book packs an emotional punch, and righteous folks have busily denied curiosity about the gruesome details while maintaining their interest in the campaign to protect victims' friends and relatives from finding painful memories in public media.

It's tempting to cite a need to know and understand as a future preventative to gain access to this type of information. Dispassionate accounts from so-called experts are acceptable, but fiction has been labelled exploitive. But Crosbie's imaginative communications with Bernardo prove that contemplating the human soul is indeed artists' work, and she's the one to do it. She has several volumes of poetry to her credit, and is an insightful commentator for Toronto's Globe & Mail.

Psychologists can list all the characteristics essential to the making of a killer. They pore through the data, eager to discover that extra detail, the killer instinct that elevated Bernardo into the annals of mass murder. With dozens of references scattered throughout the book, from Shakespeare to Jerry Lee Lewis, Crosbie skillfully delivers readers to the understanding that the killer is part of our culture and our collective personality. There is no tell-tale line to be crossed before commitment of the deed itself.

Partly, this is what allowed Bernardo to operate, capitalizing on his Hollywood good-looks, adopting a more appealing name, staging a storybook wedding, and generally developing his people-management skills to charm victims and keep them, undetected. This too, is how he won Homolka's heart. For a time at least, he outplayed us at our own games.

Truth is, just like the fairy-tale couple, we are all lured by the forbidden, tempted by the quick, violent solution, fascinated with the gory minutia. We slip easily enough into action when society's rules permit, such as a declaration of war or the state-sanctified punishment of those who fail to await these permissions. We're titillated by depictions of murder and mayhem in news and entertainment.

As lights dim in the theatre of the mind, we get an extra thrill believing the story is based on fact. We suspend disbelief, identify with the characters, live vicariously through them. We mentally re-enact their deeds. And we stop there, most of us, denying the impulse to hurt out of empathy for others.

Bernardo and Homolka were not so easily satisfied. In becoming killers, they did not become something more than us. They are less. They lack restraint.

But still the question lingers. We want to know: What must it be like?

Paul's Case, in the original print or the recently released RocketEdition and Adobe PDF e-book formats, brings readers close to answering that question, perhaps as close as we dare come. And Crosbie brings us to a harder truth. If we restrain ourselves in civil society even partially through cathartic indulgences in violent media presentations, then Karla and Paul have killed for us all.