Murderland
Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers - 'I highly recommend it' (R. F. Kuang, Observer)
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- 13,99 €
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- 13,99 €
Publisher Description
'Murderland reads like a true crime thriller' SUNDAY TIMES
'Haunting, elegant and fiercely intelligent' OBSERVER
'Lyrically luminescent' NEW YORK TIMES
A terrifying true-crime history of serial killers in the Pacific Northwest and beyond - from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Prairie Fires
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 and nightmarishly 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 of 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. A propulsive non-fiction thriller, Murderland transcends true-crime voyeurism and noir mythology, taking readers on a profound quest into the dark heart of the real American berserk.
'I highly recommend it' R. F. KUANG, author of KATABASIS, OBSERVER
'Compelling' LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS
'Breathlessly propulsive . . . Fraser's prose is lyrical, elegiac' JOYCE CAROL OATES, NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
'Extraordinarily well-written and genre-defying . . . a moody masterpiece' NEW YORKER
'A powerful plea' FINANCIAL TIMES
'Compelling, beautifully written . . . at heart, a cry of outrage' WASHINGTON POST
'Wonderfully propulsive and hard to put down' ATLANTIC
'Brooding and often brave' BOSTON GLOBE
'Not to be missed' CHICAGO TRIBUNE
'Sharp, incandescent' SEATTLE TIMES
'A great writer can make art of the most grotesque material, and Fraser does' WALL STREET JOURNAL
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
What makes a murderer? Pulitzer winner Fraser (Prairie Fires) makes a convincing case for arsenic and lead poisoning as contributing factors in this eyebrow-raising account. Fraser, who was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, where smelters belted out poison for decades and a proliferation of serial killers in the 1970s and '80s earned the region the nickname "America's Killing Fields," marries a poignant memoir of her Washington State childhood with a vivid catalog of crimes by Ted Bundy, the Green River Killer, and others. Throughout, she forges links between ballooning 20th-century crime statistics and declining health outcomes due to pollution, noting that the so-called "golden age" of serial killers came to an end in the '90s as leaded gasoline was banned, smelters shut down due to decreasing profits, and the Environmental Protection Agency stepped up pollution controls. While it initially sounds far-fetched when, for instance, Fraser links brutal violence on Mexico's borders—where 500 women were murdered between 1993 and 2011—to a rise in unregulated factory towns, her methodical research and lucid storytelling argue persuasively for linking the health of the planet to the safety of its citizens. This is a provocative and page-turning work of true crime.
