Serial Killers Books

I had a hard time putting this book down. Well written and kept my attention.

I've never read a book by this author before and certainly won't again. WAAYYYY too long - as another reviewer mentioned, too many subplots that were unnecessary and went no where. Lots of errors - look at page 83, half way down. Nell & Beam are in an appartment alone, when....Kane cuts a box. HUH? Well, I won't go on and on - like this lousy book, but there were a lot of errors and it's annoying. I also thought the ending came out of left field - no real indication of who the killer was. Very poor effort.

I read a lot of thriller/crime fiction, and I thought CHILL OF NIGHT was subpar. It's readable, but the plot is standard serial killer stuff, weighed down by a bunch of subplots that have little relevance to the main story.

Put simply, this novel is not tightly written. This novel also has too many characters, leading many of them to be underdeveloped and ultimately uninteresting. I found most of the dialogue kind of flat and repetitious. The ending does have a surprise twist, but I personally found it kind of anti-climactic, and not worth the 450 pages of long build-up.

I was also annoyed by certain continuity errors in this novel that should have been spotted by a capable editor.

Lutz is a capable writer, but I wouldn't waste my time with this particular book. Your typical novel by John Sandford, Robert Parker, Michael Connelly, Sandra Brown, or Lee Child is much, much better than this.

In "Chill of Night", John Lutz once again presents the reader with an ever gripping tale of terror about a serial killer. In his "Night" books, Lutz has chosen to create a series of characters--retired detectives, backup detectives--who are well developed and interesting. In "Chill", retired detective Artemis Beam and his partners hunt down a killer whose purported motive is bringing down the justice system which allows guilty killers to go free. There are no gruesome horrors in these killings, but the tension continues to build as the killer broadens his target base and New York City is terrorized. The eventual discovery of the identify of the Justice Killer is a surprise with a twist, with subtle clues presented along the way which were overlooked by this reader, only realized in hindsight. Set aside some time when you start this book--you won't want to put it down.

Homicide detective Artemis Beam has been retired for four months. He left his job at the NYPD after experiencing two traumatic events--the suicide of his wife of twenty-three years, and a job-related shooting that left him with an injury to his right leg. After the shooting, Beam received a promotion to captain and started collecting his pension. He hates retirement; since leaving the force, he is having trouble sleeping and wanders around feeling alone and useless. His psychoanalyst sister, Cassie, thinks that he should try therapy to help him adjust to this new stage of his life.

However, as so often happens in novels of this type, Beam is seduced out of retirement. Deputy Chief Andy Da Vinci asks him to head up a team to track down the "Justice Killer," a man who executes jurors (mostly forepersons) whose "not guilty" verdicts allowed accused murderers, child molesters, and other suspected felons to go free. The vigilante, who calls himself "Justice," has decided to take the law into his own hands and he has an uncanny way of disappearing after committing his crimes. He leaves no evidence behind except for a capital letter "J." Da Vinci believes that Beam is the perfect man for the job, considering his impressive record of successfully tracking down serial killers throughout his career.

Beam's team consists of Detective Looper, a man in his fifties who is trying to quit smoking, and Nell Corey, a woman coming off a nasty divorce who has a tainted reputation in the police department. Although the detectives conduct endless interviews and tenaciously pursue all possible leads, their investigation goes nowhere. Why is Justice able to kill so easily without being caught? The bodies continue to pile up and the cops are increasingly frustrated.

At almost five hundred pages, "Chill of Night" is a bit long, but length has its virtues. Lutz takes the time to humanize both the killer and his victims. He also delves into the delicate relationship between Beam and Nola, the woman he loves, who blames him for her husband's death. Beam desperately wants to make peace with Nola, but she rebuffs him again and again. In addition, there is an engaging subplot about Nell Corey's attempts to embark on a new romantic relationship.

"Chill of Night" is a workmanlike novel with an ending that will probably not shock alert readers. However, there is plenty of suspense and excitement to keep the audience engrossed and Lutz's smooth prose style, crisp dialogue, and gentle humor make this an entertaining and satisfying police procedural.

I recently bought this book as well as Justinian's Flea: Plague, Empire and the Birth of Europe and The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death.. All are fascinating reads. However, unlike the 2 latter books, Return of the Black Death lacks essential footnotes( or even chapter " notes" at the end of the book) needed to support one's "evidence" and conclusions.

There are too many examples to cite them all . But , I shall give one example from a randomly opened page : On page 77, many " facts" are listed and not one is referenced. Erasmus and even Henry VII is quoted....but again, nothing given to refer to as an original or even a secondary source.

I don't know if this was sloppy scholarship or a rush to get the book published. I am a bit disappointed...especially after reading the other 2.

This is an excellent example of a book that would have made a very good magazine or journal article. The authors are convincing in their case that haemmoragic plague, rather than bubonic plague, constituted the Black Death. And, it is possible that scientists could engineer a superbug that could kill millions of billions of people. But all of this could have been said much more efficiently in 30 pages. Especially in the first half of the book, the authors put in huge block quotations from primary sources, in explaining the effects of the plague. In the whole book there are countless examples and long explanations. The pages themselves are fairly small. But there isn't that much to say and, again, it could have been said with much more brevity. The substance of what they say and the bottom-line conclusions are solid and interesting, but blown up with lots of filler, the book does not quite succeed as such.

I'm a life sciencist. I read this book about 6 months ago and looked it up on Amazon today because I wanted to recommend it to my brother. In looking over the reviews, I must disagree with the first reviewer who, if he read the book at all, appears not to have comprehended any of it. The book is utterly fascinating, and the evidence the authors present in support of their hypothesis is convincing. The authors finish their tour de force by explaining how the myth that Yersinnia pestis was the cause of the Black Death came into being. Great myths are difficult to dispel. Hopefully, the painstaking detecive work we can praise and thank the authors for will eventually put paid to the deep-rooted myth that the Black Death was caused by fleas transmitting Yersinnia pestis from rats to humans.

While an interesting perspective on both disease in our current world and the nature of disease itself, their evidence left me unconvinced.

It has been well documented and proven the Y. Pestis, the cause of the Black Plague, is common and almost exclusive to rat populations. For the plague to spread to humans certain conditions need to be met. Yes, world travel and trade increases the risk of spreading the plague and yes, it is very likely that another outbreak could occur as it has done for hundreds of years. The period between 1347 -1355 was not the first or only occurance of this particular plague, it was just the most deadly.

They offered no plausible explanation of the origin of y. pestis nor did they prove that rats are not the carriers of the disease. Black Rats and their particular species of flea have been the identified carriers since the victorian era. It has been widely documented and proven that in this disease, humans are mere collateral. The evidence presented in this book is well documented and interesting, but it fails to prove their point.

Scott and Duncan have quite obviously done their homework! I can't imagine the time (& tedium) it must have taken to sift through all those records, but it was well worth the effort. I believe Scott and Duncan have seriously found the genuine cause of the Black Death. The way they present their information makes it seem as though it were staring us in the face all along. It's hard to believe so many scientists have clung to false assumptions in the face of what seems to be overwhelming evidence (just consider Iceland alone!). I simply won't be able to equate the Black Death with the Bubonic/Pneumonic ever again.

THIS BOOK GIVEs INSIGHT TO A SMALL PERSON WHO WAS NOT THE BIGGEST OR BEST OF THE SERIAL KILLERS I HAVE READ ABOUT. THIS PERSON WAS VERY RANDOM AND JUST WANTED TO MAKE HIMSELF A NAME.HE TRIED TO PATTERN HIMSELF AFTER THE ORIGINAL ZODIAC KILLER & DID NOT DO A GOOD JOB AT THIS. APPEARS TO BE A YOUNG PERSON WHO HAD MENTAL ISSUES THAT GOT TOTALLY OUT OF HAND & DESTROYED PERSONS LIVES IN THE PROCESS. A GOOD BOOK BUT NOT THE BEST I HAVE READ!!

Save your time, save your money, don't purchase this book.

Yes, in NYC this guy was called the Zodiac, but this author uses California's infamous Zodiac Killer symbol, etc. on the cover. So much for imagination.

The book itself is a total waste of time, the writing is poor, there are spelling and grammatical mistakes throughout. If I could have given this book a zero star rating I would have.

If you want good true Crime check out books by Graysmith, Keppel, Rule, Bledsoe and Carlton Smith, these names are KNOWN in the True Crime genre, Crowley is not.

I read a lot of true crime books and all I can say is: spend the money and read the book. Crowley really gets into the mind of the killer. Awesome story-telling.

Kieran Crowley, veteran NY Post crime reporter, captures the essence of the NYPD's police investigation, the pain of the victim's, and the haunting horror of the Zodiac Killer's crimes. True crime stories can't be better written. Crowley's attention to detail is unmatched. Kudos!

I've read material safety data sheets more engaging than this. Stick with Graysmith or others if you want a good read.

The early books of the Martha's Vineyard series were delightful, filled with sand and sunshine and a nice murder for J.W. Jackson to solve. Apparently the creative juices had thinned considerably by the time Mr. Craig came to the last volumes and he thought to go international. It is a disappointment. If this were the first Craig book I had read, I wouldn't bother with going back to read the others.

There is considerable editorializing that has nothing to do with the plot. In earlier books Craig could never resist taking a shot (excuse the word) at those who were not fond of guns, but in this book he comments rather extensively on others he doesn't like, or rather his hero comments, such as, pacifists, vegetarians and people who believe eating meat is wrong. As a Hollywood producer once said, "If you want to send a message, try Western Union." All books, of course, have an ethos, a moral point of view, but it shouldn't be in the form of a rant.

The second flaw, in my view, is in going from a simple murder mystery (as were the early books of the series) into some kind of James Patterson international spy/assassin super-criminal plot. It just didn't work for me. I never believed that the hero's friend, Joe Begay, was some kind of secret agent who traveled the world and became a target for a newly minted Carlos, named "The Easter Bunny." It just felt--well--silly.

As an aside, I do wish mystery/thriller writers would stop using protaganists who are disillusioned, wounded Viet Nam war veterans and ex-cops from a big city who have a bullet in them still and who were there when their partner was killed. Heard it.

What became of the somewhat cozy murder mystery set on idyllic Martha's Vinehard? Perhaps I should go back and and read those volumes again. I recomeend this to others as well.

The spooks from the intelligence community descend upon a winter Martha's Vineyard and put J.W. and his family in a bit of jeopardy, as he is trying to help his old Vietnam buddy, Joe Begay. A sinister terrorist known as "the Easter bunny" seems to be after Begay and one of his spooky associates. J.W. is dodging bullets and bombs in this excellent story. I was very impressed with the research the author did to make this story exciting.

This book is annoyingly bad written, but it keeps you turning pages.

December on Martha's Vineyard means more than holiday preparation. It means deer hunting season. A killer can hardly pick a better time to commit murder than during hunting season when people don orange clothing and walk around openly carrying guns.

So it is in the sixteenth mystery in the series Craig set in his home of Martha's Vineyard. Retired cop J. W. Jackson is visited by old-army-buddy-turned-covert-operations-guy Joe Begay. Begay shares enough of his past with Jackson to tap Jackson's curiosity--and get Jackson's help--in confronting a killer from Begay's past.

Begay is one of five on a secret team who worked together, but three of the five die within a short time. Suspecting he and the remaining member of the team, the man-hungry Kate MacLeod, are next in the killer's murder plans, Begay sends his family away, gets Jackson to help him bait the killer, then waits for the killer to appear.
MacLeod shows up at Begay's door instead, and the plot's twists and turns begin as Craig takes us down one possible road only to switch us to a more plausible path, then to an even more probable trail on our way to discovering the killer.

As you make the journey, you'll be comparing notes with local law enforcement, the FBI, the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), and J. W. to figure this one out. As if that isn't entertainment enough, you'll also enjoy the humor the author slips in. Even more good news is you don't have to have read the first fifteen in this series to like this one.

Armchair Interviews says: Prolific author Philip Craig does it again, and we are the lucky readers who benefit.

It's winter on the Vineyard, and though the tourists have gone, JW's peace is shattered by the violence threatened against one of his best friends. Isn't it fortunate that he can protect his wife and kids by hiding them away at one of the houses he takes care of for richer summer folk. Naturally, JW feels obligated to assist his friend, at no small risk to himself. This could be the plot of a gripping story, but alas, it's difficult to differentiate one set of killers from another, what with all the deer hunting, covert ops, and holdings at gunpoint on the part of the good guys and the bad. It's also hard to side with a protagonist who finds it necessary to belittle those whose views oppose his own (such as the "crabby, little old ladies" who work for animal rights.) But the worst flaw in Vineyard Prey lies in the character of Kate, a beautiful but arrogant and chillingly amoral secret agent with no visible redeeming qualities. It's astonishing that someone like Kate would make the stupid mistakes that she repeatedly commits. Much less be lucky enough to survive.
The descriptions of Vineyard scenery are the saving, evocative grace of this otherwise heartless novel.

I, like many other people had never heard of the "BTK" serial killer who terrorized Wichita in the 1970's and 80's until news clips started talking about him resurfacing. One of the first things I found amazing in Carlton Smith's book is the fact that an entire generation of people in the town it happened in had not heard of him either.

It was part of this unknowing that helped fuel one of the people the book centers on, which is lawyer Robert Beattie. Beattie's psychological outlook into the case from the clues that had already been collected helped him concoct a plan to bring the BTK killer back out of hiding. Like many serial killers, the BTK had been known for wanting attention, and when Beattie announced he was writing a book about the BTK, the killer quickly resurfaced, taunting police with mailed evidence and letters till the error made with a computer floppy disk led to his capture. From then on, the world knew the BTK as Dennis Rader; a pillar in the community and the last person many thought would be capable of such a thing.

Carlton's novel can be broken down into three sections. One is the start of Beattie's involvement with the case. As the book rolls on, we later go through each grisly murder as Dennis Rader performed it. We are not shown so much the mind of the killer, but we really don't need to be. His actions of murder coupled with his strange fantasy world of bondage through collections of homemade playing cards and his over the top ego all come together to paint a picture of an extremely disturbed individual. We cry for the victims, and we gasp in disbelief at how many times he was almost caught. This leads to the third part of the book, which is the area that dances around the initial shock of the murders that started with the Otero family. It is during this part that shows how many in the law enforcement community were trying so hard to bring justice to the table, but also showed how mishandled evidence and an almost state of denial by some helped hinder the investigations. I was amazed to find that so many mistakes were made, but the biggest perhaps was the continual reluctance to release anything to the public. At the time, they did not want to create a "panic" in Wichita, while at the same time some of the details of the consecutive patterns that were being seen could have helped some residents identify the suspect sooner as well as be more careful about who they opened their door to.

Sad, Frustrating and scary, the trip Carlton takes us on serves up the right justice in the end. The book really takes off when BTK communicates with law enforcement when he resurfaces and although stirring up scary memories in the town of Wichita, renews an aggressive interest by dusting off the case and taking it on to finally capture the BTK killer once and for all.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the families and friends of all of the BTK victims at this time. The dark side of human nature is always around us, and I just hope that in the days ahead, there are fewer Dennis Raders in the world to ruin the lives of others.

I eagerly awaited thia book and what a dissapointment it is. Obviously it was written for those who know little or nothing abt the case, but want to read a true crime book on the throne or on the subway. There was no new data and the descriptions of the crimes were like reading fiction, especially since the author obviously did not check the details, even though they are on the internet. At one point he says that after the first crimes, Rader went home to his wife and kids, when at that time he had no kids. There are countless others, but out of respect for those involved, I will not specify. Was not worth the wait or the money.

The book was so-so. I was disappointed that it told me absolutely nothing about Dennis Rader as a person. There was nothing in the book about his background from childhood and nothing about his marriage and relationship with his wife. I'm glad I didn't spend a lot of money for the book.

I lived in the area these murders took place and still have a home in Wichita. It is very interesting to me to learn more about the murders and the investigation. I also had friends on the police department that were very involved, but could not know this at the time.

I thought this book was very detailed, but I don't know how accurate the provided details were. It was interesting how the author wrote his book in hopes of getting BTK mad - if BTK thought the author was getting all the glory by publishing a book about BTK, maybe BTK would try and communicate again.

The author's ploy worked, and it helped lead to the capture of BTK.

For people who know nothing about the BTK case, this book would be very good. It may be kind of boring to those who know much about the case, however. It's an interesting true crime story, a quick read, and even if it wasn't the most factual BTK book, I enjoyed it.

About a creepy psycho nurse who takes his anger out on helpless hospital patients by killing them. Very difficult to get through, not due to the writing style but due to the horific nature of Cullen's acts.

it is a shame that the tragic story of the victims and their families is told in such a cheap, sensationalized way. instead of serious journalistic reporting, we are subjected to a story filled with conflicting information, a difficult to follow storyline, and a tedious amount of adjectives. there is no sense of factual reporting, but instead tabloid drama. this story deserves a dignity in telling that this author did not even attempt to achieve.

in all fairness, my opinion is based on reading only half of the book. i just found it unbearable, and a waste of time. i'll wait for a book written in a more professional manner.

Yep...I am a nurse. And at one time I reported a nurse I thought was doing very similar misdeeds (but they never proved it.) So heck yeah I wanted to read this book. While the subject interests me, I have a hard time getting around the writting. The authors paraphrase previous paragraphs frequently..unbelievably redundant. The time lines are all screwy - jumping around is so confusing and they often leave off years in their dates. They had one man dieing in 1996 but said he was widowed in 1997. How did THAT work? And if I heard about Charles size, pallor or stone facial expressions one more time I was going to flip. This book felt like a much shorter book that was stretched to fill pages. That makes no sense since so much happened - so many murders. There was plenty of filling available -the authors just didn't bother. I would skip this one unless you have some personal interest.

I found myself cringing everytime Charles Cullen's name was mentioned in this book because just about every mention of his name is prefaced by a superfluous adjective... (i.e. the killer nurse with the sickly pallor...the homicidal RN, the ghostly death shadow....and the list goes on). At times, I felt like I was reading a badly written hospital thriller. I did, however, appreciate that the victims were personalized and not referred to as a victime number. The book is a bit drawn out and tedious, but overall it's an average to decent true crime read.

"Nurse" as defined by Webster is one who cares for the infirm, one who attempts to cure and alleviate suffering. Forget our traditional view of a nurse when you open the pages of "Death Angel," a grim, cold-chill true story of serial killer, Charles Cullen.

Penned by writer Clifford L. Linedecker and Zach T. Martin, the son of Cullen's first known victim, "Death Angel" is a shocking chronology of lives lost and an intimate portrait of a psychopathic murderer who confessed to killing some 40 hospital patients between 1988 and 2003.

Night time was Cullen's time. He requested after daylight hours assignments to ICU wards in Pennsylvania and New Jersey hospitals where he used the skills he had learned not to heal but to kill. He chose his victims at random, deciding who would live and who would die.

After he was apprehended Cullen insisted that he hadn't wanted people to see him as he was, as who he was, Detective Sergeant Braun asked, " Who are you, Charles?"

"A man, person, who was trusted and had responsibility for a lot of people dying," was the answer. "......I had no right to do this. I had no right! I just couldn't stop! I couldn't stop it!"

What could be more frightening than a man who repeatedly commits such heinous crimes, knows full well what he is doing, but cannot stop? From pictures included, Cullen is slim, a man with pleasant features. He doesn't at all appear to be the monster many claimed he was, yet his acts indicate he was less than human. What could possibly have compelled anyone to kill and kill again and again the most helpless of victims?

Unfortunately, there is not an ending to this story. As late as June, 2005 Cullen's guilty pleas for five murders were accepted. And the victims families continue to plead for legislation to prevent rogue healthcare workers from moving from job to job as Cullen did.

- Gail Cooke

I read the reviews before I bought this book. The reviews were rather mixed, so I decided I would read it and decide for myself. Well... the author IS full of himself. He is also from England, and he uses different British words for the "American" words we are used to, which isn't bad, just very annoying. He takes a lot of poetic license in this book, writing a lot of times of the events the way he thought they would have happened. One reviewer was correct, you could get the information found in this book on the internet for free. I also think he left out several serial killers that I would consider more evil than the ones he wrote about. But, he probably wasn't able to get "exclusives" or interviews from the other killers, so he left them out. If you can get the book cheap, but it. Otherwise, don't bother.

I'm not a huge fan of true crime but I couldn't put this book down. The true stories of the serial killers,especially Aileen Wuornos and Arthur Shawcross, were very interesting. Although I'm no expert on the genre, I believe it was well written and well researched, and the stories about the killers' childhoods and brutal crimes really grabbed me. The fact that the writer didn't make excuses for these monsters was a plus.

When a book is subtitled The Most Evil People in the World Tell Their Own Stories you would expect large portion to be interviews with them and their own words. This was my belief when I bought the book and I was surprised not to find that.

There are good backgrounds on each offender and their laundry list of crimes without too much detail. There are also times that they are quoted directly but for the most part the story is relayed by the author and the end of each chapter is stamped "from an interview with...". Some offender's are not quoted directly at all.

Overall, it's a decent book if you do not know about the crimes or offenders. If you are looking for a scholarly or clinical insight into the minds of these offenders, look elsewhere. It surely isn't here.

Author does not get as much information from the subjects as the title suggests. It talks more about the generalities of the crimes which is easily obtained from internet research. Also, the author give himself a lot of credit for his unsuprising findings - however, I find that most authors of true-crime non-fiction are that way. Gives information on little-known killers - ie: Carol Bundy.

This author is so full of himself! He talks about himself nearly as much as the killers. If anyone says they are an author, and writes a codenmed killer enough, they would probably be granted an interview too. I was disappointed in this book!

The Saga of the Bloody Benders by Rick Geary is part of A Treasury of Victorian Murder put out by NBM Comics Lit. Geary has done another bang-up job merging history, murder, and detailed drawings to pull the reader into a time that is often difficult to understand. Without the historic underpinnings the Benders killing spree would seem a bit comical to the jaded readers of today -- as we lock up our cars, our houses, keep aware of our surroundings. Could the Benders do what they did if they existed today? But that would be a different tale -- and you'll want to enjoy the chill horror of this one.

The story of the Benders and their place in the history of Labette County, Kansas, along the Osage Trail is one that highlights the dangers faced by the settlers as they began moving west to find a better life for themselves and their families. Without the historic overview of Kansas becoming a state, the demographics of the settlers, and the geographical overview of the Osage Trail -- it would be difficult to understand how the Benders could do what they did for so long before anyone began to even suspect that something wasn't right at the Bender Inn and Grocery.

It was 1871 and inquiries were coming to the local officials from relatives, friends, or business associates trying to locate a person known to have traveled along the trail but who had not been heard from after passing through Labette County. Later it was found that the disappearances began shortly after the Bender men, Pa and John Bender Jr., bought land, built a Inn and Grocery at a high point along the trail and sent for the women, Ma and Kate Bender. The Benders kept to themselves -- dour and silent. Kate however was a beauty and fairly outgoing -- setting up a side business telling fortunes. Most thought them eccentric but harmless.

What happened to the Benders? How did they manage to kill so many people undetected? Why did it take so many years before anyone even looked closely at the Bender Inn and Grocery? Geary gives you a sense of place and people leading you step by step through the setup and discovery and aftermath of the crimes. The illustrations are such an intrinsic part of the narrative that often you forget that his is a graphically told tale because the flow is so smooth you're drawn into the pages and the story.

Geary has opened a chapter in history in a very accessible way with this graphic novel series.

And "The Bloody Benders" is a fine addition to the series, recounting th history of a family of robber/murderers in the West that kill by stealth, & could easily appear in today's headlines. Their disappearance as mysterious as their lives.

Geary's art & writing improve steadily as time goes by, & while the first volumes in the series are very, very good, this one has a fine polish to it.

If you like it, try these--
The Big Book of the Weird Wild West: How the West was Really Won! (Factoid Books)

Daisy Kutter: The Last Train (Daisy Kutter: The Last Train (Turtleback))

Rick Geary's graphic novel series A TREASURY OF VICTORIAN MURDER returns with volume 9 of the series especially recommended for prior fans of his graphic novel mysteries. Black and white drawings illustrate the story of four strange people who use seduction to attract wealthy victims, whom they then kill. Excellent action and high drama mystery lends to a fast-paced graphic novel story hard to put down, and recommended for any general-interest holding strong in graphic novels.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

I think this is the first in the series. There is an intro to Victorian times and figures, followed by three stories

The Ryan siblings story is over before it begins, and has no more complex story arc than "two siblings were horribly killed and noone knows why or who did it." I wish there was two more pages of intrigue.

I have forgottne the 2nd one which I read just a week ago.

The third story and last of them is more gruesome than the others.

I expected more detailed, better drawn images than what the book contained. Coarse grained paper is used for the pages & the overall quality of the project is poor. Several short episodes of Victorian murder are presented in black & white line drawings with little detail. Nothing unusual or particularly interesting in the telling or presentation.

It's not a word I use lightly, but there's no better way to describe John Leonard than to say he's a genius. He certainly won't appeal to everyone's taste, but if you like essays written by a man whose mind ranges over the whole course of human history and knowledge, and who isn't afraid to bring all that knowledge together in a single sentence, then here's the guy for you. Not only is he a genius, but he's also terribly witty, and you don't get that from a lot of geniuses.

But you won't like Leonard if all you want from an essay about a book is an answer to the question, "Should I read it?" or if you are a fan of such folks as Newt Gingrich, Ronald Reagan, or Attila the Hun. (But don't think Leonard's leftism is knee-jerk; there's a wonderful essay in here about smoking, in which he confesses, "I stick burning leaves in my foodhole," and goes on to explore his life as a social pariah among all of his purer-than-thou lefty friends.)

Every page herein is suffused with a stunning literacy, and Leonard drops titles the way most of us shed skin. I would love to spy on him for a day, because I don't know how he has crammed so much knowledge into himself. He writes brilliantly about the whole history of cyberpunk, then goes on to fine surveys of African literature, Israeli literature, and everything that ever hit a page in the USA. But Leonard knows more than books, for he seems to have seen at least one episode of every television show ever created and made it to all of the major movies of the past fifty years or so. He's got a good grasp of American political history, and he seems to have some sort of social life. He's even got time for AA meetings.

I don't know how he does it, but thank whatever deity you can imagine for him. He's a wizard with words, an encyclopedia of everything, but more than that he's got vision, scruples, morality. And he wants to find the same in other people. He writes, "I like to be reminded that once there were writers for whom the convulsions of our time were a revelation, an insult or a wound, instead of a thesis topic cross-linked in a Nexis search to syndicate a rant."

Sure, Leonard's references sometimes cross themselves into a feedback loop, and he's got a love of paragraph-long lists, and he has a tendency to recycle himself from previous books and articles (having read all of Leonard's collections of essays over the years, I've heard that satire means "never having to say you're sorry", as does arch-conservatism, while standard liberalism means "always having to say you're sorry", but the phrase is so great I don't mind Leonard's apparent determination to keep it in perpetual print). His indulgences and habits are a part of his charm, and I wouldn't want him to lose any of it. There is not and has never been a critic like John Leonard -- perhaps there has never even been any sort of writer like him. But I haven't read quite enough to speak authoritatively on every writer who ever lived; Leonard has, though, so I'll defer to him.

I agree 100% with the reader who writes that Leonard's prose is borderline incoherent. Borderline is too nice! It's vulgar mania dressed up to look like a real literary style. What rubbish! I'm less offended by Leonard's tiresome, slack, unexercised, undemanding leftism (though anyone who can call Giuliani's reign in New York "Mussolini meantime", as Leonard does in his Grace Paly piece, is not only being morally offesnive, but shows that he simply doesan't respect the weight and actual meaning of words: in itself, a disqualification for a man who poses as a critic.) No, it's not the politics so much that offends me as the vulgar literary sensibility, whipping itself up into hysterias, so that readers are fooled into thinking that here is a journalistic Thomas Pynchon. The prose is truly crass, tin-eared, clumsy, and exhibitionist. What this man thinks of a "poetry" is just the kind of foolish, bumbling-but-apparently-flashy language that rock stars put on the backs of records, and that rock journalists use in publications like NME. God help us that this man has set himself up as a critic. (But then, this is someone who thinks that Barbara Kingsolver is "our very own Gordimer or Lessing": q.e.d., not a literary mind.)

I found this book to be one of the more unusual things I've ever read. It had multiple personalities; Entertaining, Enlightening, Humbling, Compelling, Strange, Compelling, and I'm sure I'm missing a few. The vocabulary is unbelievable. Don't touch this book without a dictionary in-hand. However, the writing is captivating. It alone is worth the price of reading about writers and works you've never heard of, with attendant feelings of functional illiteracy. I put this book down often. But, I always picked it back up. It was a unique read.

John Leonard has been making me get up early on Sunday mornings so that I may watch his reviews of T.V. and media on CBS's "Sunday Morning". From those early morning encounters, I was prepared for the pacing and precision of his sentences. But now, after sampling this fine collection of essays, what a pleasure it is to savor his words on the page, like hard candy.

John Leonard is a left-winger. Fine, so am I. The trouble is, he thinks that this is a daring and remarkable thing to be. Every few pages he lets us in on his leftism and (more subtly, though subtlety has never been his thing) how incredibly proud of himself he is for being leftist. You get the sense that he wishes there were some real and imminent peril in praising Toni Morrison, but there isn't--and he KNOWS it--and therefore his tough-boy declarations are not only repetitive but repulsive. Does he care about the left's constituency, or does he just want to be seen caring in order to get chummy reviews from the Village Voice? Also, has anyone noticed that his prose is more often than not borderline incoherent?

If you want to know what's going on in the dark corners of America's nightmare, just check out the latest Fred Rosen true crime. Rosen, who wrote 'Lobster Boy' among others, is one of the best unsung true crime writers doing it today.

First off, let me say that this book was a total flop in every way, shape, and form. I'll admit that I was intrigued when I read that one of the killers was a racist devil worshiper (I'm morbid. Sorry.) However, Fred Rosen has no idea what he's writing about. Jonathan Lawrence, one of the murderers, owned a copy of the "Satanic Bible," and because of this, Rosen claims that the boy worshiped the devil. Nothing could be further from the truth. La Vey's Satanic Bible has nothing to do with worshiping an external deity and Rosen failed to do his homework when it came to getting the facts straight. True, Lawrence was a detached sociopath who murdered three individuals without any sense of remorse, but blaming Satanism was clearly a cop out on everyone's part. Satanism (at least the La Veyan tradition) explicitly forbids the taking of human life, something which the killers did many times. Jeremiah Rogers, the other half of the Rogers-Lawrence duo, was a physically unattractive neanderthal who Rosen repeatedly refers to as "good-looking." You've seen the cover -- he's not even slightly attractive. Sloppy, poor, and terribly uncreative are the best words I can use to describe Rosen's writing style. The book was a major disappointment on many levels and I would highly recommend that it be passed over completely.

This book is junk. It doesn't take an Einstein to realize that if there is a spelling error on the second page ("hurrican"), there is a problem as far as the writing and/or editing of the book is concerned. Author Rosen frequently goes off on tangents about other similar killers which don't add much and there are 15 pages of excerpts from his other books at the end to pad out the book's length. Typical with Pinnacle true crime books, there are several nauseating pictures. At one point, there is a character introduced -- Wesley, brother of one of the two mentally-disturbed white trash the book is about -- and I have no idea about his history in the family! Terrible.

I couldn't believe the depravity of the two killers, Rodgers and Lawrence, or the way, Rosen held me spellbound as he cut back and forth between the killers and soon to be victims.

In the end, I really was moved to tears by Rosen's descriptive compassion for the victims, and the way Rodgers and Lawrence seemed fated for death.

My name is Ryan. Leighton Smitherman, one of the victims in the book,is my uncle. Please read this book, I WILL BE CHECKING BACK TO THIS PAGE TO SEE WHAT YOU THINK.