Writer's Fallout Shelter

What spawned this topic was a friend's manuscript. In her novel the bad guy is a serial kidnapper/rapist/killer. The details she chooses to use can be horrifying, but they are also necessary to drive the story forward. Despite the fact that it is fiction and that such things do happen in real life, I know when the novel is published -- and it will be published because it's good -- she's going to face severe criticism from certain elements of the American population.