Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers by Caroline Fraser, just out in paperback, is about far more than serial killers. It’s about the violence of war-damaged fathers, the violence of treatment of unwed mothers and their babies, the violence of geology in some places, the violence of civil engineering and transport systems and the inherent violence of unfettered capitalism.
Fraser, a Pulitzer winner, writes so well, so well, her fascinating content becomes a page-turner.
I’m not exactly a typical guy, so I leave you to judge just how much this review influences you.
If you do get it and read it, I’d love to hear what you think.
John (Not a Doctor of Literature).
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I just finished listening to it on Audible. You’re right, it is beautifully written and also horrifying as she calmly describes the details of a catalogue of grisly murders perpetrated by a small number of men in the Tacoma area.
How many victims? Nobody knows. Certainly in the thousands. Mostly women but also some boys and young men depending on the obsessions of the perpetrator.
She intersperses this grim account with reports of thousands of tons of lead and arsenic pumped out daily from the local smelter. How many ppm of toxic metal should be allowed in children’s blood? Nobody seems to know. But when the toxic load falls after the smelter closes, the serial killer rate drops.
Coincidence? Nobody knows.
Well, some people did research which was quietly suppressed by the smelter bosses. Because it was an audio book I don’t remember who did the research. But eventually a Clean Air Act was grudgingly introduced and the Environment Protection Agency set up. Industrialists lobbied to prevent this. But then they just moved their polluting plants to Africa and Asia.
It’s a grim read but worth it. If it explains the behaviour of violent predators then it is worth paying attention.
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The two of us must be right.
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Read this last year. Great book. Lead in petrol, which when removed led to a huge decrease in criminal behaviour and rising intelligence in children across the world. The correlation between heavy metal pollution and serial murders/sex crimes in one geographic area was astonishing. Ted Bundy, the Highway Killers. There were dozens of them, many of whom have never been caught. The linkage was there, but big business and politicians did zilch for years. Profits came first.
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The Clyde was the cradle of the Industrial Revolution and along its banks were metal works, not just iron and steel, but other metals like chromium. The Clyde rises in LEADhills and this is another of the metals produced. In Garngad there was copper works, in Maryhill zinc was produced, and there was a galvanising plant in Tradeston. And there were chemical plants in the city – a huge one in Sighthill, which is memorialized in the new park as benzene rings etched on rusted iron posts.
Glasgow in the notorious novel was ‘No Mean City’, the city of razor wielding gangs. The journalist, Jack House, wrote a famous book, ‘Square Mile of Murder about the Charing Cross area. Murder, per capita, in Glasgow was huge into the 1960s. Violence was common.
Glasgow, and Scotland, had a greater proportion of men in the armed forces of the UK, than the other nations. Given two World Wars, the Boer War and the Korean War last century as involvement in various colonial uprisings in Kenya, Malaya, Aden, and heavy involvement in previous centuries, there must have been hundreds of thousands of men who had been brutalised by combat and suffering untreated PTSD, and who had been breathing in heavy metals and other industrial fumes since birth.
These were the men called the ‘poison dwarfs’. Perhaps POISONED Dwarfs would have been more accurate, with their stunted growth and bowly legs the consequence of domestic over crowding, poor nutrition, lack of sunlight.
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