I seem to be going through a spate of reading serial killer novels. Putting aside what this might say about me, it's interesting to compare the approaches.

Michael Marshall's "The Straw Men" is a full-on bizarre thriller with everything about the killer kept hidden. In Michael Pye's "Taking Lives" we know the killer's identity but after the start of the story know him only by his effects on others. "The Sandman" provides yet another approach as we spend most of the novel inside the killer's mind.

It doesn't look very promising at the beginning. Chapter one is a third person account of a young man visiting a prostitute. After gaining her confidence he knifes her in the throat, takes a few photographs and leaves.

A serial killer attacking prostitutes. Oh dear, how many times have we seen that cliché? Then we find that chapter one is just a prologue and the majority of the book is a first person account of the killer's life - his journal.

By now I'm very nervous - a clichéd action prologue followed by a life journal doesn't bode well. Fortunately Gibson avoids the apparent traps and gives us a fascinating novel.

The young man is William "Mackerel" Burton. He is a serial killer. Despite the prologue, he doesn't just kill prostitutes. He'll kill anyone. Sometimes it's because he thinks their life is so sad he wants to help them end it. Other times it's because people get in the way. And sometimes it's just for the fun. For him, being a serial killer isn't some religious crusade, it's just a hobby.

That's right, just a hobby. Gibson defies all the usual conventions of what a serial killer should be and how they are created. Via Mackerel's journal we see his life from a very young age. All the standard inciting incidents are there, any one of them would cause a shrink to say "Aha!". Yet none can really be called the root cause. Mackerel's destiny as a killer just seems to creep up on him without any particular trauma.

Obviously we have to think "unreliable narrator" with any first person account, however it all rings true. We are getting a fascinating insight in to a man who just drifts in to a career as a serial killer in the same way that some people drift in to a career in banking or journalism.

Gibson manages to meld character and story together excellently as he takes us inside Mackerel's head. The killings are not overly gory, Gibson concentrates on how Mackerel feels about them. There's even humour. One lovely set piece has Mackerel planning to kill one person but getting it wrong and ending up leaving a whole pile of bodies in his wake. Yes, boys and girls, mass murder can be funny.

The one thing that lets The Sandman down is the lack of any real narrative drive. There are set pieces and what might be called subplots, but no real main plotline driving through the whole thing. This is understandable given the setup. After all, there's no grand plan to Mackerel's life. However it does leave a slight feeling of something missing.

Despite this flaw, The Sandman is a dark and funny read. You can't help relating to Mackerel, which is slightly worrying. And probably the whole point.