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A review by editbarb
The Man from the Train: The Solving of a Century-Old Serial Killer Mystery by Bill James, Rachel McCarthy James
4.0
Really a 3.5, but I rounded up because of the mention of the connection to the John Wilkes Booth mummy.
I'd heard of a couple of these murders, but not most of them. Bill and Rachel James track a series of axe murders through the first couple decades of the 1900s. I particularly liked how they went into detail about why people of the day wouldn't have made the connections between the murders, and why some of the murders were covered differently. The authors focus on the racism of the time, and how that altered perceptions of some of the murders--and how suspects were pursued and treated. I didn't expect to read about lynching in this book, but there it was. The authors provide a fascinating look into the lives of people in small towns and rural areas in the early 1900s.
That said, there were things that bothered me about the book.
**The total lack of a reference list (and an index, which would've been super helpful). The authors occasionally mention newspaper articles, books, or documentaries about the murders, but there's a lot in here and there's very little in the way of attribution. James says he's not a historian, which is fine, but you don't get to choose not to document your work.
**I'm still not convinced that it was organized in the best way. And as I noted in my review of [b:Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence|9507382|Popular Crime Reflections on the Celebration of Violence|Bill James|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1442586464l/9507382._SY75_.jpg|14393063], James has a habit of referring to incidents from earlier in the book without clarifying further--when the book is almost literally a list of families being axe murdered, it's hard to remember which is which. I'm also not sure about how he jumped around in time; he would do groups, but it was hard for me to remember the order in which they happened.
**The writing style could be grating. There are many asides directly to the audience, and a lot of "We'll get to that later" and "When we talked about this earlier, I left out this piece" and a few jokes that didn't really seem appropriate.
**Related, there's a LOT of words spent assuming that the reader will be skeptical about the findings of the book and trying to convince the reader of things. I wasn't going into it skeptically. If the authors thought readers would be skeptical, maybe just have a preface.
**James also presents many things as fact that don't necessarily seem to be fact; there are leaps in logic throughout that don't always make sense. (And again--I wasn't going in as a skeptic!) His opinions seep in a bit too much. For example, near the end he goes on a rant about the "It was a sleepy town where nothing happened" as being insulting to the residents of the town. But those comments frequently come FROM residents of the town. I've lived in towns like that. It's not an insult. His ire about it was odd.
All that being said, it certainly kept me..."entertained" seems like a bad word here, but I flew through it, and was creeped out enough that I didn't want to read it right before bedtime.
I'd heard of a couple of these murders, but not most of them. Bill and Rachel James track a series of axe murders through the first couple decades of the 1900s. I particularly liked how they went into detail about why people of the day wouldn't have made the connections between the murders, and why some of the murders were covered differently. The authors focus on the racism of the time, and how that altered perceptions of some of the murders--and how suspects were pursued and treated. I didn't expect to read about lynching in this book, but there it was. The authors provide a fascinating look into the lives of people in small towns and rural areas in the early 1900s.
That said, there were things that bothered me about the book.
**The total lack of a reference list (and an index, which would've been super helpful). The authors occasionally mention newspaper articles, books, or documentaries about the murders, but there's a lot in here and there's very little in the way of attribution. James says he's not a historian, which is fine, but you don't get to choose not to document your work.
**I'm still not convinced that it was organized in the best way. And as I noted in my review of [b:Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence|9507382|Popular Crime Reflections on the Celebration of Violence|Bill James|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1442586464l/9507382._SY75_.jpg|14393063], James has a habit of referring to incidents from earlier in the book without clarifying further--when the book is almost literally a list of families being axe murdered, it's hard to remember which is which. I'm also not sure about how he jumped around in time; he would do groups, but it was hard for me to remember the order in which they happened.
**The writing style could be grating. There are many asides directly to the audience, and a lot of "We'll get to that later" and "When we talked about this earlier, I left out this piece" and a few jokes that didn't really seem appropriate.
**Related, there's a LOT of words spent assuming that the reader will be skeptical about the findings of the book and trying to convince the reader of things. I wasn't going into it skeptically. If the authors thought readers would be skeptical, maybe just have a preface.
**James also presents many things as fact that don't necessarily seem to be fact; there are leaps in logic throughout that don't always make sense. (And again--I wasn't going in as a skeptic!) His opinions seep in a bit too much. For example, near the end he goes on a rant about the "It was a sleepy town where nothing happened" as being insulting to the residents of the town. But those comments frequently come FROM residents of the town. I've lived in towns like that. It's not an insult. His ire about it was odd.
All that being said, it certainly kept me..."entertained" seems like a bad word here, but I flew through it, and was creeped out enough that I didn't want to read it right before bedtime.