There are some things you’ve just got to be prepared to take on board as a fan of particular genres. Like, if you’re into science fiction, you’re going to run across a lot of world governments, either in the purported future of this planet or the governance of otherworldly societies. Or, also from science fiction, in any story set in the future that features a list of American presidents from the past, there’ll be a few familiar ones plus a couple of others thrown in to suggest greater ethnic and gender opportunity as time goes on. Some of those tropes are harmless enough, but there’s one that really does bug me: the notion within too many also-ran thrillers that serial killing is some kind of artform.

As seen in Se7en and Silence of the Lambs I have no particular problem with this meme. It works for those stories because they’re well crafted and original, and both of them brought something new to the party for the time they were made: Se7en was operatic in its styling, and grandiose murders fit into that world just perfectly. And Hannibal Lecter is such a wonderful character than his sheer improbability is irrelevant: he’s a delightful monster. If only the same could be said of the killers that have appeared in his wake in any number of films, books, and tv programmes.

How many times have you now been presented with a killer who has a theme to his murders? Maybe he sews up his victims’ mouths with yachting thread. Perhaps he arranges them into the form of classical sculptures. Or offs them according to a schema laid out in an obscure holy text. Whatever, the basic idea is to elevate death from something random that happens to us all to an act of twisted creativity performed by a sick genius somewhere. And guess what: I’m fed up of it.

There’s something pretentious about the way that murder is presented in stories like those, and I’m wondering what it says about our society that such tales are as popular as they are. Perhaps it’s related to serial killer chic – the kind of bullshit that results in sad nerds writing to notorious prisoners and buying their sketches online. And there is something genuinely concerning about that: apparently the Austrian father who imprisoned his kids underground and sexually abused them has received hundreds of letters from women claiming that they love and understand him. Shudder.

Truth is, murder is sad and stupid, and most likely to be committed either by a family member, or a random idiot with a knife or gun, according to what age you are. That’s it. No cryptic crossword style machinations, no elegant artistry, just brute thuggery and conventional mammalian power games taken to their ultimate extreme. Why the need to make murder something fascinating and ornate when the reality is, almost always, crass and idiotic?

There’s a kind of pornographic aspect to suffering for some readers and viewers, a relishing of the misfortunes of others. And the worse the suffering, I’m guessing, the greater the payoff for the person who enjoys that kind of thing. Hence Saw having three sequels by now, and the dismal range of memoirs based on formulaic angst so popular in publishing these days. Clearly the actual news isn’t enough for fans of torture: for the real detail, you need the heightened effect of fiction. I’m half wondering when people will start writing books about what it’s like in Darfur, and curious if there’s anything out there on that theme already…But why wouldn’t there be, in a world where people still relish reading about Nazis, and there are tv programmes devoted purely to showing people experiencing road rage?

Somewhere along the line, as creators, we’re responsible for what gets produced. And you’ve got to work out what’s acceptable for you to be involved in. Is what you’re doing contributing to the worst instincts of audiences, or does it have something to say that allows for a flicker of light in whatever darkness you believe surrounds you?