Murderland
Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers
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4.1 • 90개의 평가
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- US$16.99
출판사 설명
An Edgar Award finalist for True Crime • A National Bestseller • A Washington Post Notable Book • Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, Forbes, NPR, Vulture, Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, Slate, Newsweek, New York Post, LitHub, Kirkus Reviews, and The Nerve • A finalist for the 2026 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction
“Scorching, seductive . . . A superb and disturbing vivisection of our darkest urges.” —Los Angeles Times
“This is about as highbrow as true crime gets.” —Vulture
“Fraser has outdone herself, and just about everyone else in the true-crime genre, with Murderland.” —Esquire
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Prairie Fires comes a terrifying true-crime history of serial killers in the Pacific Northwest and beyond—a gripping investigation of how a new strain of psychopath emerged out of a toxic landscape 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 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 hardly unique in the West. As Fraser’s investigation inexorably proceeds, evidence mounts that the plumes of these smelters not only sickened and blighted millions of lives but also warped young minds, including some who grew up to become serial killers.
A propulsive nonfiction thriller, Murderland transcends true-crime voyeurism and noir mythology, taking readers on a profound quest into the dark heart of the real American berserk.
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.
사용자 리뷰
Wow!
I feel like I learned so much from this book. It’s fiction it’s a biography it’s history it’s everything rolled in one that helps you understand the making of serial killers in the north west.
It’s changed my perspective of how nature can sometimes bring out the worst in nurture. Definitely read this book if you are looking for a more in depth of how serial killers in the northwest were made.
Muderland
Absolutely spellbinding
A Horrific Illumination
This is one of the most informative and compelling books I have ever read. It should be required reading for every U.S. citizen. This is our hidden history. Caroline Fraser “said the quiet part out loud” she exposed the greed that our nation tries to hide. She teaches us how greed kills in many forms and how greed wins unless the poor victims fight back.