London - Lionel Shriver, author of the bestselling novel 'We Need To Talk About Kevin' believes that murderers behind mass school shootings 'compete with each other for the highest body count.'
Speaking on BBC television Wednesday, Shriver, who lives in London, said it was no coincidence that the Virginia Tech shooting took place five days before the eighth anniversary of the Columbine massacre.
She warned that other would-be killers would be 'inspired' by the public outcry and international media frenzy sparked by each tragedy.
'I think they (mass killers) are competitive. I think the fact that this happened this week, which is almost eight years to the day from when Columbine happened is not a coincidence.
'There was a deliberate effort to top the body count. It is creepy but these people are very aware of each other,' said Shriver, whose controversial novel deals with an 'unlovable' teenage boy who murders seven of his classmates.
'The school shootings phenomenon is one of those self-perpetuating things. They get the ideas from each other,' she said.
'I think the need to derive some kind of lesson from these events is almost overpowering. It is a way of redeeming them. But I do not think they deserve to be redeemed,' Shriver contended.
'They are evil and evil is eternal. I do not think we do ourselves any favours by trying to eliminate that mystery.'
Her book, an international bestseller, was awarded the 2005 Literary Orange Prize for fiction by women.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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