Review: "Murderland," Caroline Fraser

There were 669 serial killers at large in the 1990s in the U.S. The number dropped to 371 in the 2000s, and to 117 from 2010-2020.

Could stricter environmental regulations be the reason?

Gasoline used in cars contained lead from the 1920s until 1996, when it was banned. Lead-based paint wasn’t recognized as a threat to children’s health until the 1970s; it was outlawed in 1978.

Meanwhile, throughout most of the 20th century, industrial smelters spewed lead, arsenic, copper and other toxins into the skies of numerous cities, including Tacoma, Washington—where Ted Bundy grew up.

He’s not the only serial killer the Pacific Northwest has produced.

Is there a connection?

Caroline Fraser makes a strong case for one in “Murderland,” an astonishing mélange of scientific data, true crime, memoir and sociological analysis.

Fraser grew up on Mercer Island, in the Seattle Metro area. She was born in 1961 into a dysfunctional family and weaves the bizarre and sometimes frightening events of the latter half of the 20th century into her narrative.

As I grew up in the same period, I vividly remember the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy; the Manson murders; Chappaquiddick; Patty Hearst; and Three Mile Island. 

It did feel sometimes like the world was spinning out of control.

In Fraser’s own back yard, the Lacey V. Murrow Floating Bridge (connecting Seattle and Mercer Island) provides another backdrop of confusion and death. It was the scene of frequent bizarre accidents until it finally sank in 1990.

Fraser paints a horrifying picture of the pollution she believes contributed to the derangement of serial killers like Bundy, Israel Keyes, Richard Ramirez (the Night Stalker), Gary Ridgway (the Green River Killer) and Randy Woodfield (the I-5 Killer). The smell of Washington state’s third most populous city was known as “the aroma of Tacoma.” Fraser writes. “Gardens fail; crops die; bees die. Strange spots appear on the laundry hung out to dry on the line.” Ash from the smelter falls onto the streets; children develop breathing problems.

Workers got sick, had disfiguring accidents. It’s not easy reading—it is compelling reading.

Then there are the serial killers and their unspeakable crimes. Sometimes, when I’m watching a crime drama that features a lunatic torturer, I think, “Really?” Well, yes. Really. Again, not easy reading.

And yet, I was glued to the pages of this book. Fraser is a fine writer, and she is angry about a lot of things—the toxins, the Rockefellers and Guggenheims who financed the industries, her father…the list goes on. But the book is not a rant. It is well-researched, passionate and even poetic at times. 

I wondered about my well-being when I was about in the middle of “Murderland,” when the dismembered body parts (both murder victims and smelter workers) were piling up. Maybe I really needed to be reading a cozy mystery set in a quaint Southern town with a fabulous bookstore.

Nah. “Murderland” was worth the angst. Besides, I needed to see Bundy executed, and the smelters shut down.

Review: "Kill Your Darlings," Peter Swanson

Wendy and Thom Graves seem to have it all. They live in a lovely Victorian near the ocean on Boston’s North Shore. Their grown son, Jason, is doing well. They’re financially secure. Thom is a professor in the English department at New Essex State University while Wendy is a published poet.

But they share a dark secret.

Thom murdered Wendy’s first husband, an alcoholic philanderer who also happened to be quite rich. Thom struggles with his guilt. He drinks too much, and has casual affairs.

Wendy keeps an eye on Thom, but chooses to ignore problems. However, when she discovers he may be writing a novel about their past, she decides he too must go.

Kill Your Darlings is a tour de force. It is a delicious novel of suspense with fascinating, well-drawn characters and a story that is told backwards.

Yes. Backwards.

The reader follows Wendy and Thom back in time, as they deal with the mysterious death of Thom’s department chair, have a baby, decide to have a child, and get married. Thom commits murder. Wendy and Thom hatch the murder plot. The two connive to meet each other in Cambridge, Mass., “by accident.”

Wendy and Thom actually do encounter each other by chance at a writers’ conference. They had been teenage sweethearts, when Wendy lived briefly in New Hampshire, Thom’s home state. They connected on a school trip to Washington, DC., where they snuck off to see the “Exorcist stairs.” Let’s just say the place where the film’s Father Damian met his death looms large in both past and present in this novel.

The reader learns that Wendy never told Thom the truth about her own past, once she moved away from New Hampshire. And Thom had kept a special secret of his own for 40 years. It’s a stunner revealed in the final pages.

I didn’t feel much compassion for either character, but I couldn’t dislike Thom, despite his foibles and misdeeds. Wendy, with her dry wit and razor-sharp coolness, was a character to admire, evil as she was. She was just so cool about everything.

Swanson is a master plotter. I also enjoy his books because they are usually (maybe always) set in New England, a turf he is well familiar with. His characters often have cats with interesting names—the Graves live with Samsa. I do appreciate an author whom I can depend on for a good read—and a few sardonic smiles.

Essay: Leo 2.0

What happens when your household goes from four cats to one?

Leo is showing us the way.

A large, long-haired black cat, Leo has always been quiet and reclusive. But since he’s become the only feline in the house, he’s come out of his shell.

Leo now meows when he’s ready to eat. He often follows me, or my husband, Paul, around. He waits at the door when Paul takes our dog, Will, for a walk, then sniffs the pup’s hindquarters once he’s back in the house.

To those of us who have known and loved Leo for 12 years, this is amazing.

Leo came to us because he needed a home and we had a space. Paul and I determined, in our younger years, that we could handle four cats. We wanted to help the cat overpopulation problem, but four was the limit. If we lost one, we added one.

A student of mine needed a place for his cat, and we had an opening.

Leo was almost two at the time, so he’s 14 now. When he arrived, the petite tortoiseshell Clara reigned supreme in the family. Sweet but elusive Annie and handsome, gregarious Teddy rounded out the kitty population, and there were two dogs, Aquinnah and Martha.

Leo seemed to accept his place at the bottom of the kitty pyramid. He became friends with Annie. They slept together and he often groomed her. Leo and Teddy maintained an uneasy male alliance. Periodically they would tumble around, hissing, in what Paul and I called an exhibition of Greco-Roman wrestling. Leo studiously avoided the dogs.

He spent much of his time upstairs, where there are sunny, south-facing windows. While Annie and Clara hid when we had visitors, he and Ted would socialize. But mostly Leo kept himself to himself. 

Quinn passed away in 2020. Clara was next at the end of 2022, then Martha in early 2024. Will arrived this past January, and then a few months later we lost both Annie and Ted. 

Leo’s world had been turned upside down. Will was gentle and respectful of the cats from the moment he stepped through the door, but he was still a new, strange presence in the house. Now Leo’s best friend and frenemy were gone. 

Not surprisingly, Leo got sick. He wasn’t eating, was vomiting and spent even more time upstairs. Though he didn’t exactly hide, we’d find him in odd places, like next to the love seat in the library. Normally, he’d be on the back of the couch, watching the world go by.

Since he’d hacked up a huge hairball at the outset of this illness, we gave it a few days, to see if he’d get over it. Then we brought him in to the vet’s. Steroids, antibiotics, anti-nausea meds—Leo was nearly back to normal within hours. And he was cheerful; clearly glad to be home.

There’s nothing like your people spending $300 on you to make you sassy, I joked.

Actually, I do think our furry friends do feel gratitude when they return home from the vet’s. 

Leo’s appetite was great and he was engaging with us more and more. So we quickly noticed when he appeared to be squinting out of his right eye. Soon clear discharge appeared.

It was back to the vet’s again. One week later.

Leo is now doing fine after a round of eye drops. Better than fine. He’s Leo 2.0.

He still spends a lot of time by himself upstairs, but he also hangs out with us several times a day. Leo is regularly looking for rubs and hugs. I’m not exaggerating when I say we never heard his voice until a few weeks ago. We wondered if he had one.

Leo’s meow is bittersweet to me. I miss the loved ones we have lost, but I’m glad he’s finding himself. I’m sorry he’s an only cat, but the other day I caught him stretched out in the sun next to Will in front of the glass door to the deck. A friendship in the making?

We can only move forward in the face of grief; Leo is showing the way.

_______

 I welcome email at lizzie621@icloud.com

Review: "Marble Hall Murders," Anthony Horowitz

Book editor Susan Ryeland and detective Atticus Pünd are back for parallel adventures in the present day and 1955. And what a delight they are.

Susan’s comfortable London life came crashing down in Magpie Murders. In Moonflower Murders, she was lured back to England—briefly—from the Greek island hotel she was running with her love, Andreas. Now she’s back in the UK, enjoying her cozy basement flat, working freelance for a publisher, and once again tearing around the countryside in her beloved red MG.

All is going well—she has even added a cat to her household— until her boss presents her with a dubious project. Eliot Crace, whose two ventures into murder mysteries had bombed years before, is writing a “continuation” novel featuring Atticus Pünd. The PI’s creator, Alan Conway, whom Susan edited, is dead, and she thought the series was as well.

Given Crace’s earlier works, Susan is not optimistic. She dutifully reads Crace’s first 30,000 words—she has questions and suggestions, but admits to herself that it could work. Crace has even worked in some anagrams, that Alan Conway speciality.

Then she meets the author.

He’s a mess emotionally—a touchy, quick-tempered former drug addict. Worse, he seems to be using the Pünd book to get back at his family.

Eliot is the grandson of the famed children’s author Miriam Crace. Though she created a beloved global franchise for her tiny, do-gooder characters, The Littles, she was a tyrant to her family. She’s left scars on them.

One of the settings in the Pünd novel is a magnificent villa in the south of France. It’s owned by Lady Chalfont, who bears no resemblance to Miriam. But other members of her family clearly mirror the Craces, who all lived on an estate with grandma in Wiltshire. Lady Chalfont is murdered, and Eliot suggests Miriam was as well.

Susan is alarmed by Eliot’s motivations, and begins digging into the Craces’ past. It’s not pretty. The author goes off the rails and reveals his family secrets in a radio interview. Susan decides she has to walk—run?—away, but when a Crace is killed, she is the prime suspect. Now she is up to her neck in the situation.

As in the previous novels, there is an actual Atticus Pünd novel within these pages. This time it’s truncated, but, fear not, a satisfying conclusion is reached in both stories.

I have thoroughly enjoyed this trilogy, as well as the PBS dramatizations of the two previous installments (Marble Hall Murders is to come!) Not only do they feature wonderful performances by Leslie Manville and Tim McMullan, but Susan and Atticus interact in the films, as they both work to solve their intersecting mysteries.

I eagerly devoured the 579 pages of Marble Hall Murders and was sad to see it wrap up—though it did end happily. Thank goodness. After what she’s been through, Susan deserves it!