Life & Wisdom Quote by Laurell K. Hamilton

There’s a sly shrug built into this line: of course he has fans. Hamilton weaponizes the reader’s expectations and then punctures them in the same breath. The setup (“You’d think…”) performs moral common sense, the kind we like to believe governs taste and community; the punchline (“but he does”) reveals the uncomfortable reality that charisma and narrative thrill routinely outrun ethics.

The specific intent is less to defend the “sociopath assassin” than to diagnose the audience around him. Hamilton is pointing at fandom as a social phenomenon with its own logic: attraction to danger, the romance of competence, the erotic charge of someone unbound by rules. Calling him a “sociopath assassin” is deliberately clinical and damning, a hard label that makes the fan following look even more suspect. Yet the casual phrasing keeps it from becoming a sermon. It’s gossip with teeth.

Subtext: we don’t just consume stories; we recruit ourselves into allegiances. In genre fiction, especially the darkly glamorous corners Hamilton often plays in, antiheroes invite readers to try on transgression without paying the real-world cost. The line also nods to the way fandom can launder brutality into aesthetics: sleek competence, witty banter, a tragic backstory, and suddenly a killer becomes “problematic fave.”

Contextually, it lands as a meta-comment on contemporary pop culture, where true-crime stars, stylish villains, and “morally gray” love interests rack up stan armies. Hamilton isn’t shocked; she’s archly noting how predictable our unpredictability is. The joke stings because it’s aimed outward and inward at once.