Book Review | Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers

Rating | minus infinity stars forever and ever and ever

Well folks, we have a strong contender for worst book of the year, and one of the worst books I've ever read.

Just looking at the cover is infuriating, because this book was so fucking awful. I absolutely hate hate hate it.

I HATE THIS BOOK.

Now I am just getting angrier about having wasted time even skimming when it became clear that the author thought she was entirely more clever and wonderful than she actually was.

I hate this book.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Here is what the book promised, via Goodreads:

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Prairie Fires comes a terrifying true-crime history of serial killers in the Pacific Northwest - a gripping investigation of how a new strain of psychopath emerged out of a toxic landcape of deadly industrial violence

Caroline Fraser grew up in the shadow of Ted Bundy, the most notorious serial murderer of women in American history, surrounded by his hunting grounds and mountain body dumps, in the brooding landscape of the Pacific Northwest. But in the 1970s and 80s, Bundy was just one perpetrator amid an uncanny explosion of serial rape and murder across the region. why so many? Why so weirdly nightmarish and gruesome? why the senseless rise and then sudden fall of an epidemic of serial killing?

As Murderland indelibly maps the lives and careers of Bundy and his infamous peers in mayhem - the Green River Killer, the I-5 Killer, the Night Stalker, the Hillside Strangler, even Charles Manson - Fraser's Northwestern death trip begins to uncover a deeper mystery and an overlapping pattern of environmental destruction. At ground zero in Ted Bundy's Tacoma, stood one fo the most poisonous lead, copper, and arsenic smelters in the world, but it was only one among many that dotted the area.

As Fraser's investigation inexorably proceeds, evidence mounts that the plumes of western smelters not only sickened and blighted millions of lives, but also warped young minds, spawning a generation of serial killers.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Sounds fascinating, right? Something I would LOVE!

Well, it's not. For MANY reasons.

She also he throws in Dennis Rader (BTK Killer), because he apparently played in some factory waste pits or something in Pittsburgh when he was a kid, and Jack the Ripper because of all the pollution in late 19th century London, and plus James Huberty, the mass shooter who killed 21 at a McDonald's in San Diego in 1984, because the hair analysis from his autopsy showed high levels of lead. A couple others get shorter mentions as well - Richard Ramirez, Warren Leslie Forrest, Edmund Kemper, Richard Speck, and a couple others I don't even remember because this was such a mess.

Here's the thing: her theory would have been highly engaging, if she was not such a pompous ass. I was hate-reading by page 100 because she was so flippant and disrespectful with her tone. This book makes me seriously angry.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Here are the notes I took:

Pg 181 | Oh good, another update on how many times Ted has purchased gas in a day.

Pg 188 | Oh, look, now another person, completely unrelated to the narrative, who owns a VW Beetle. This time it's Stephen King, and he's at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park.

Pg 193 | I really should have started counting how many times she calls Ted handsome.

Pg 199 | "Here's a picture for you." No, thanks. Just here for the hate-reading at this point.

Pg 265 | How does it even make sense to add Israel Keyes to this? Although, given the absolute utter nonsense she has thrown into this book alerady. I suppose it makes sense. But if she's trying to make the case that lead poisoning made all of these men serial killers in the 70s and 80s, including Keyes does NOT mame sense because he wasn't even born until 1978.

Pg 284 | "Not everyone has Ted's appeal." Ted doesn't have 'ted's Appeal'. He is not attractive or handsome or in any way looking like a Kennedy.

Pg 302 | "here's real for you. Six days later, on May 18 at 8:32 AM, Mount Saint Hellens blows her head off." Because why not? Of course we should talk about Mount Saint Helens along with serial killers, and Patty Hearst and buying gasoline and who owns VW Beetles, and whatever this dummy did in her childhood and teen years and earlu adult years.

Pg 315 | "If not for the Green River Killer, murder would be down in Seattle in 1983." Well thank goodness he was there to keep those numbers up! Seriously, what the fuck? This complete disregard for the victims, not writing compassionately about their violent deaths is so disgusting. Not sure what the author thought she was accomplishing with this tone, but it's gross.

Pg 335 | "...but beginning with the murder of Stacy, he has returned to the United States, where he'll be flying helicopters and killing prostitutes for the forseeable future." Again with the flippancy. This book fucking sucks.

Pg 360 | "We pay attention to the wrong things. We make a mystery of Jack the Ripper. It's not a mystery. It's history." You are not as intelligent or as profound as you think you are.

Pg 392 | "Necrophilia is an acquired test, and not many human beings acquite it." No fucking kidding.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This book was bad, ladies and gents. SO SO BAD.

The biggest issue is the complete lack of scientific evidence to back up her claims, and the fact that she undermines her own argument - specifically with the inclusion of Keyes (born too late), Rader (supposedly poisoned elswhere), Jack the Ripper (wtf) and Huberty (not a serial killer). While the first three ARE serial killers, Huberty was a mass shooter. And she clearly is focused on serial killers with a specific type of psychopathy, involving rape in most cases and sometimes necrophilia in others. Huberty doesn't fit, nor do the others based on her argument that the PNW was a particularly terrible breeding ground for serial killers, given the proximity to the smelters nearby.

Yet there is no comparisons to data from other regions of the country. If the lead smelters were the cause of this specific kind of psychopathy, should we not have seen serial killers developing all over the country, wherever a smelters were concentrated? There should have been a rise in serial killers coming out of the entirety of the PNW and West, stretching to the mid/upper Midwest, and down to Texas as well. If there was, we don't know about it because the author did not look into that. It's hard to claim that the PNW had more serial killers in that era, if we don't know the numbers from other regions.

On top of looking at US data, what about the rest of the industrialized world? Did other countries with similar pollution outputs have serial killers in the same numbers? And how about comparing that data to non-industrialized countries? Are there fewer serial killers in parts of the world that did not have lead smelters poisoning the environment in the 70s and 80s?

And let's not forget the girls. Why is it only these disturbed teenage boys who grew into serial killers? Did girls in the 70s and 80s not face the same amounts of lead poisoning and grow up in the same toxic environment in the PNW? Are we just better at hiding our crimes? Probably, but that's not the relevant part right now. If the author's theory is to be given any real consideration, these questions must be answered as well. The author herself grew up in the area, yet did not become a serial killer. Why not?

Back to the inclusion of Keyes. The author says that there was a decrease in serial killers as the 80s went on because lead was being eliminated in all kinds of products, as the smelters were also being shut down due to major environmental concerns. So did Keyes get less exposure to the lead? Yet he was still a prolific serial killers and there are many victims we likely will never know about, due to his committing suicide in jail. But he buried kill kits all across the country, and the number is quite likely much higher than eleven.

There are so many other reasons why there's been a decline in serial killers since the 80s. Technology has come so far in the last forty years and makes identifying criminals (somewhat) easier. Investigators have so many more tools now to solve crimes - especially looking at the nation-wide databases that allow departments to share info across the entire country. The science of DNA has also come a long way, not to mention the fact that there are literally cameras everywhere now. None of this makes it impossible to be a serial killer, but it does make things a bit more difficult.

But who needs data and research and statistics, when you can instead also learn about the author's personal life that is in no way connected to the killers at all? Plus all the random people, also not connected, who drove VW Beetles. Then there's the added bonus of Tacoma's engineers being super terrible at building structurally sound bridges, and Patty Hearst's kidnapping, and Mount Saint Helens erupting.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

TLDR: The author's tone is often flippant, making it disrespectful to the victims. Her writing is pedantic and pretentious. There is ZERO data, research, statistics, etc to back up any claims, or even to simply be able to take the theory seriously. And given how many times she talks about Bundy being handsome/attractive, she seems a little in love with him. Gross.

Highly highly highly NOT recommended. Ever.