A review by evewithanapple
Helltown: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer on Cape Cod by Casey Sherman

dark slow-paced

2.0

This is not a nonfiction book. It has no business being sold as a nonfiction book. In the author's note, Sherman describes Quentin Tarantino as an influence, after having watched Once Upon A Time In Hollywood; this might work for a movie that's upfront about being fictional, but in a book billing itself as true crime, it is not. Sherman spends more time on his personal grudge against Kurt Vonnegut (seriously, did the guy kill his dog?), the "witches" who followed Costa (there's no citations on these sections so I truly can't tell whether or not they ever existed, although I know for a fact that at least one of those chapters was entirely made-up bullshit), and conversations between Costa and the alter ego he claimed actually committed the crimes than he does on telling the story of the actual victims. Really, the victims are an afterthought; Sherman wants so badly to be the next Norman Mailer, four dead women are a speed bump on his route to glory.

Also, on the subject of the final chapter: Sherman makes up a semi-pornographic scene in which one of Costa's followers seduces and then murders a woman (gotta get in those descriptions of her eating pussy pre-murder) who would go on to be known as the "Lady of the Dunes." The follower is probably not real, but the victim certainly was. Her name was Ruth Marie Terry, she was identified in 2021, and in all likelihood she was murdered by her husband. I know there was no way for Sherman to know this when he wrote the book, but excuse me if I find his side trip to Girls Gone Wild Land on the back of a real murder victim a tad distasteful.