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sternapple 's review for:
Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers
by Caroline Fraser
dark
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced
This book could have been so good. Unfortunately, The author finally doesn’t hone in on the central point - industrial pollution was a direct cause of the spate of serial killers in the Northwest - until somewhere around the middle of the book, and then, very effectively, at the VERY END. The last fifteen pages.
Before you get there, though, you have to make sense of four storylines - the serial killer stories, the industrial pollution of the PNW, a memoir, and, inexplicably, the tale of the I90 bridge - and no, they don’t connect. The bridge and industrial narratives are interesting; the memoir adds nothing; the serial killer narrative spends WAY too much time on Bundy, jumps around rather confusingly among other killers, and includes much gruesome detail that could have been toned down significantly.
The writing is often strong but also suffers from a bit of “trying too hard” - trying to sound ominous (like a visit from BTK and his ilk wasn’t ominous enough). I almost made a drinking game of how many times she wrote someone “may or may not have” done something. OK, I get it. He might have done it. Just say that.
I was especially annoyed by all of this when I got to the end and FINALLY! In the last fifteen or so pages, the points about lead are explained with science, context, and conviction. I wanted a whole book of that, not the muddled, lurid, multi-narrative I got.
Before you get there, though, you have to make sense of four storylines - the serial killer stories, the industrial pollution of the PNW, a memoir, and, inexplicably, the tale of the I90 bridge - and no, they don’t connect. The bridge and industrial narratives are interesting; the memoir adds nothing; the serial killer narrative spends WAY too much time on Bundy, jumps around rather confusingly among other killers, and includes much gruesome detail that could have been toned down significantly.
The writing is often strong but also suffers from a bit of “trying too hard” - trying to sound ominous (like a visit from BTK and his ilk wasn’t ominous enough). I almost made a drinking game of how many times she wrote someone “may or may not have” done something. OK, I get it. He might have done it. Just say that.
I was especially annoyed by all of this when I got to the end and FINALLY! In the last fifteen or so pages, the points about lead are explained with science, context, and conviction. I wanted a whole book of that, not the muddled, lurid, multi-narrative I got.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Child death, Confinement, Gore, Pedophilia, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Kidnapping, Stalking, Murder