Reviews with content warning for Confinement - American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century

KEYES: There is no one who knows me, or who has ever known me, who knows anything about me, really. . . . I’m two different people, basically.

RUSSO: How long have you been two different people?

KEYES: A long time. Fourteen years.

I re-read this for my Criminology course. I enjoyed it a lot more the first time I read it (I use the term "enjoyed" loosely because in reality there's nothing to enjoy about this type of subject matter). During my second read I noticed that while it was detailed in terms of the crimes committed, court proceedings and childhood background it didn't explore Keyes' psychology enough. I really wanted an in depth evaluation of Israel Keyes' personality ( even if it was educated speculations based off given evidence) but was rather dissapointed in this regard. However, I do understand that a large portion of this case has not been released to the public so I can't really fault the author too much.

Nonetheless, I'm going to keep my initial rating because in some aspects it was useful for my research needs.

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avidreaderandgeekgirl's review against another edition

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dark informative sad tense slow-paced

2.75

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redwrapped's review

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

3.75

This is simultaneously a book the world needed and also could have (and probably should have) waited for. The world should be able to read a detailed account about Israel Keyes but also, the information in his case is still largely withheld, so many angles and points in the book fall to either 1) "We don't know for sure, but ..." or 2) complete speculation with almost nothing to prove or disprove their theory; it's just there.

The lack of evidence/withheld evidence that hasn't been released or unsealed from a deposition is not the author's fault. This is still an interesting and detailed book that's been as strongly researched as possible from the large amount that is missing/unavailable.

I'm not surprised there are so many gaps within the investigation as there is, between the Alaskan State Police and the FBI bungling and mismanaging the case at every turn. I have an idea that a large reason why so many recordings and other documentary evidence has been withheld is because it paints their agencies in a negative light. Just the more "flattering" evidence shows that they were often negligent and ignorant of how/where they were investigating and how they should have approached Keyes to wrangle more information from him.

Between the agencies and the prosecution, the case became a territorial pissing contest instead of focusing on the goal: determining how many people had been murdered and finding out if anyone else was in imminent danger (I say this because Keyes' FBI profile was later updated with the "terrorism" category).

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clawrence345's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

4.0

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