Playing with Knives: A Fictionalized Serial Killer Memoir

In the year 2080, a 106-year-old serial killer begins recording the story of his life.

Mark Nutt grows up in a broken and unstable home, and from an early age his violent impulses begin to take shape. What starts in childhood escalates into a pattern of murder that follows him into adolescence and adulthood, blurring the line between confession, invention, and self-mythology.

Set in and around Britain's underground rave scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the book moves through illegal warehouse parties, motorway hitchhiking, pirate radio, drugs, music, and the fleeting freedom of a pre-digital subculture. As Mark is drawn deeper into this world of hedonism and escape, his life spirals further out of control and the violence becomes more frequent, more brutal, and more indiscriminate.

In this fictionalized autobiography, Edwin Burdis reimagines his own life as a serial killer, blending crime, memory, and subcultural history into a dark, psychologically charged portrait of a life shaped-- and distorted-- by violence.