What It’s About: This book details the investigation of a series of murders that took place in Michigan during the 1960s and the subsequent trial of the perpetrator for one of those murders.

Plot: This is certainly a story worth telling. It was obviously a time of fear for the communities involved, and, technically speaking, most of the murders remain unsolved, although I do believe the man they arrested did commit all but one of them. These murders were also particularly vicious, and the victims deserve to have their stories told, especially since most of their cases never went to court.

Research and Organization: This book is chronological in nature and presents a straightforward and easily followed accounting of the facts of the case. If you’re trying to look up additional information, though, the author does point out that almost all of the names have been changed, including those of the victims and murderer. You can find the real ones easily if you just Google Michigan Murders, though.

Trigger Warnings: General misogyny, murder of a particularly vicious variety, period-typical lack of criticism of law enforcement, rape.

Final Thoughts: I read this book because I grew up not even an hour from where all of these murders happened, and I never knew anything about them. They happened about twenty years before I was born, but I was surprised I hadn’t at least heard of them at some point. This account of them, however, is disappointing. The victims remain largely faceless, as there is not a lot of discussion of them beyond the fact that they were murdered. There were also several huge errors made by the police that, while described, are not taken to task in any way,

one being that they questioned the perpetrator after one of the early murders and accepted his alibi without verification because he was related to someone on the police force

. While I do attribute these things to the time the book was written, it lacks the gritty investigative feel of many of the true crime narratives I do enjoy. It feels soulless, only observational in nature, and for me, that’s not enough to make the story come alive. It’s interesting and well-documented, but it’s just a list of facts. There’s nothing else there.

It should also be noted that one of the murders, which was clearly an outlier in the series even in this book, at least to me, has been attributed to someone else.

That’s not an omission by the author, as his book was written long before that discovery. It does seem that there are some more updated books and shows about this incident, so I might seek those out and see if they’re better. They just weren’t available on Kindle Unlimited like this one was when I read it.