5 comments about The Spy Who Stayed Out in the Cold: The Secret Life of FBI Double Agent Robert Hanssen.

1. Post 9-11, how many people really know how deeply Robert Hanssen damaged national security? A recent dinner with several academics suggested, not a whole lot, if that sample counts in any way. Havill's book may not satisfy the connoisseurs of this niche of investigative journalism, but the book serves an important function; it exposes the depth of the betrayal and the nature of the agency that he ravaged. That system and the people who oversee it, have much to be ashamed of. The press has magnificently implied that the damage was minimal. The adopted supposition then by a large part of the citizenry was that it was "low level" information that he handed to the Russians. The press did a great job of keeping the public snookered. Havill does his darndest to refute that suggestion with the details of the top secrets that were handed over to the Russians.

   As a psychological case study; Hanssen is the archetype of the Jungian shadow. The religious, dour and convinced patriot by day and the vulgar, ... depraved, traitor at night. Indeed Hanssen betrayed everyone, primarily his overworked and short-changed wife, but also his country, his church and of course, his employer. Why then, did people just fall for his act? They didn't according to the author; there were members of his own extended family, starting with his brother in law, a fellow agent and fellow employees who at least hinted at the deceptive and twisted nature of his allegiance or lack thereof.
   How can we correct such ... neglect of self-policing in our governmental offices? Well, it will not be easy, if the educated voter and the concerned public is somehow "picking up" that the damage was superficial. There are, afterall too many government sponsored daily security news items to sift through and ponder. Havill's work needs to be read and if it is as a form of entertainment; which it can be, all the better!




2. Havill, once again, has written an engrossing book. I will proclaim my own bias by pointing out something, though. On page 173, Havill mentions the Clinton years "begin with the shoot-outs at Ruby Ridge and Waco." Well, actually, no, George the first was president at the time of Ruby Ridge. And Havill's comment about "King William" make me wonder about his agenda when most of the spying going on is during the Reagan-Bush years. In books about policies or personalities you expect that: you know where the author is coming from and you digest the material accordingly. In a book that is SUPPOSED to be about Robert Hanson I find it telling that the only president he mentions in a derogatory manner is Clinton. Makes me wonder if there is other information he left out. . .Still, you can't fault the guy's talent for spinning a phrase. A worthy book.



3. Riveting, like a good novel and very hard to put down! Cold Eyes



4. Don't bother reading this book. It is the same thing over and over and over, so that it makes one want to scream. The movie "Breach" is not the true story either. It's Hollywood. Read David Wise's book, the best of the bunch written about spy Robert Hanssen. Hanssen was a brilliant if not troubled non agent who wanted to be the real deal. So instead of getting to be an FBI operative, he went to the dark side and made himself a name giving up our country's secrets that may never be recovered. It is enough to scare you to death and make you ill.



5. Feels to me like this was a rush job to be the first to get something on the market.Thank goodness I took this out from the library and didn't buy it. Even so, it was a waste of time to read. Havill is, above all, lazy - both intellectually and in the amount of research he did, and didn't do. On the two most potentially interesting facets of the story - Hanssen's personality and motivation, and the suspense of being a double agent and the catch - Havill all but takes a powder.
   
   Havill digests a lot of communications between Hanssen and the KGB, which is at first, interesting - if for nothing more than the intersection between the spy craft and the mundane. However, these communications become the beef of the book, with no spine. Additionally, since these messages turn out to be so similar and poorly woven into events, their recitation become tedious.
   
   Havill's attempts at piercing personality and motivation fall pathetically short. One is left with the picture of what appears to be a fairly average guy doing extraordinary things. But virtually no effort is made to explain, let alone even proffer a working motivational theory. We are left with just a load of poorly framed speculations. This is also a spy story with virtually no tension. Hard to believe there was virtually none when a senior FBI official spies over so many years. Havill's account is little more than, 'This FBI guy did some spying for the KGB and then he got caught.' Most writers could convey more tension than Havill describing a morning commute.
   
   Cinching the case for this book being a dud is the extremely poor writing. It's littered with ungrammatical, ungainly and unreadable prose. It's like the guy wrote it driving to work, and his editor took a powder.
   
   If you're interested in reading about this case, I strongly suggest you look for another book, if there is one. (If I recall correctly, there was a great NY Times Magazine piece on Hanssen that came out shortly after he got arrested.)

5 comments about When Corruption Was King: How I Helped the Mob Rule Chicago, Then Brought the Outfit Down.

1. This book brings you through the life of lawyor Bob Cooley and how he got involved in the Chicago 'Outfit'. Coming from Chicago myself I was engulfed in the stories he told of his childhood and even his adult life partying and living the dream life in downtown Chicago. Coming from a working class family Cooley still managed to attend Catholic high school and college. Working his way through law school as a cop he learned a lot of the ways the police worked. It was when he became a lawyor that he really got involved in fixing cases for the mob and gambling heavily. Soon enough he was in too deep to find any other way out but the feds. The stories Cooley experienced in his adult life were truly remarkable and definitely worth reading. From martial arts experts to hanging out with Sinatra at famous clubs, Cooley really lived an amazing life during most of his adulthood.



2. This is a great story of the past.We would like to know what the current situation is in Chicago? Who's in charge? Who is the new Pat Marcy? Will There be a Sequel?



3. This is a poorly wriiten account of one turncoat in the world of Chicago crime. Nothing new here and for the most part it is a boring story that I could not finish.



4. Robert Cooley was a former cop who studied law and became one of the top hustlers in the Criminal Courts Building. After years of fixing cases for the mob dominated First Ward Democratic Organization, Cooley turned informant and helped the United States Attorney for the Northeastern District of Illinois indict and convict a variety of political hoodlums.
   
   
   The negative publicity from the resulting scandal was so great that when the City Council proposed a redistricting map the former First Ward was eliminated and renumbered out of existence. The newly drawn First Ward no longer includes the downtown business district.
   
   Sadly, the book documents how the leading members of the city's legal profession and political establishment have tolerated widespread corruption and facilitated its longevity through bribing members of the local judiciary. Even murder cases could be fixed for a price.
   
   Cooley is not a hero or a saint and at times his claimed contrition seems somewhat false and selfserving. It does seem that he discovered some dregs of conscience about the same time he was about to be dropped by the leaders of the Outfit. Whether or not he was to be frozen out of the action or found dead in the trunk of an abandoned car is for the reader to decide. Cooley is now in the Federal Witness Protection Program.
   
   Local law enforcement and a series of elected Cook County State's Attorneys abandoned any pretense of prosecuting organized crime and political corruption decades ago. No meaningful prosecutions have occurred without the participation of the US Attorney. On many occasions, the power elite have succeeded in placing players in the Federal Prosecutor's office as well.
   
   What is particularly disturbing to many Chicagoans, even after repeated Federal prosecutions over the past quarter of a century, is the knowledge that many crooked political officeholders and judges remain in office having escaped the net. Some of the former Federal prosecutors who worked on the Operation Gambat (short for "gambling attorney" a code name that recognized Cooley's habitual gambling) cases are now in private practice defending the criminal suspects who are the successors to those that they formerly indicted and convicted.



5. Having lived in Chicago for years I relished this book. Reading it was like sitting in a dive bar and listening to the outrageous, hilarious, and probably sociopathic Sout' Side guy next to you tell tales of Windy City corruption so depraved you know they've got to be true.

5 comments about Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life.

1. I became curious about William Bonney, AKA Billy the Kid, when I first saw the movie Young Guns starring Emilio Estevez. I loved the movie but wanted to know how much of the story was Hollywood hype and how much of it was history.

   Accordingly I found Utley's book on Billy the Kid and found, to my satisfaction, that not only was much of the Young Guns story was accurate but that the life of Billy the Kid was as interesting and complex as any to be found in the annals of the Old West.

   The debate rages on as to whether young Billy was a poor, misunderstood folk hero or whether he was an ignorant, bloodthirsty miscreant who needs to be vilified and forgotten. Utley's well-researched and well-written book takes a multi-faceted approach to considering the complex history of young man who, despite is very short life and his even briefer career, continue to spark the imagination over a century after his death.




2. You have to wonder sometimes why some people become legends. What was it about the Kid that attracted so much attention, especially at the time of his death? A very short time after he was shot to death by Pat Garrett, newspaper accounts flashed around the country about the demise of the great "desperado" and five dime-novel "biographies" appeared, getting most of the facts wrong but creating a "hero." Life is strange.
   
   The Kid was born Henry McCarty in NYC (!) in 1859. He began being called Billy after his mother married William Antrim in 1873 in Santa Fe. (At times he also assumed the name Bonney, but no one knows why.) He gained a reputation early for escaping arrest; one time he escaped custody within hours after being arrested for horse stealing, and another time he escaped out of jail by crawling up the chimney. He escaped again in 1877 (aged 18) after being jailed for killing an army blacksmith at Fort Grant. He was in Lincoln County, NM, at the outbreak of the so-called Lincoln County War. He was involved or at least present during many of the violent incidents that plagued Lincoln County in 1878, and was wounded twice.
   
   Deep in trouble by now and getting deeper, he was wanted for a number of crimes, some of which he did not commit. Governor Lew Wallace offered him immunity for testimony in one killing, but the Kid saw a double-cross and escaped. He added cattle rustling to his criminal activities, which brought the enmity of local ranchers down upon him. Pat Garrett was elected sheriff in Lincoln County with the special task of bringing the Kid in. He was captured in December 1880 and brought to trial in Mesilla in March 1881; he was charged with murder, found guilty, and sentenced to hang in May. While in jail in Lincoln he killed the two guards and escaped; for three months Garrett tracked him down, finding and shooting him in a ranch house at Fort Sumner, NM. The Kid was 21 years old. Then the legend exploded onto the scene.
   
   They say he shot a man at age 12 (false); that he killed lawyer Billy Chapman (innocent); that he led the Regulators during the Lincoln County War (false); that he was a deadly shot (probably good, but not extraordinary). It's true that he killed at least four men. He loved to laugh and was a big hit with the senoritas (despite his buck teeth). He spoke Spanish fluently. He was an excellent monte dealer. He was "slim, muscular, wiry, and erect, weighing 135 pounds and standing 5'7" tall; he had deep blue eyes and wavy brown hair. He fancied wearing a Mexican sombrero." Chances are good (I think) if it weren't for the dime-novelists he would forgotten today.
   
   But he's not forgotten and Utley's account of his life (and legend) is magnificent. Definitive is the word for it, replacing Maurice Fulton's HISTORY OF THE LINCOLN COUNTY WAR as the best work on the Kid. (It wasn't until the last few months of his life that he was known as Billy the Kid.) Utley's scholarship is renown in the Western field; his series of books on the military history of the West is likewise definitive. If you're interested in the Kid and want to learn all there is to know about him (fact and fiction), this is the book to get. Highly recommended.



3. An understanding of Billy the Kid's life is greatly enhanced with a study of the Lincoln County War, and Robert Utley's knowledge of the Lincoln Couty War is unsurpassed, (see his other book, "High Noon in Lincoln.") Utley's genius is his ability to bring these complicated historical moments to life, and weave the thread of a person's life through the moment. With this information you can better understand Billy the Kid's thought process, and the details of the jail breaks and shootings become more meaningful. Robert Utley is the most scholarly of all outlaw historians, and this book reveals his ability to bring his knowledge home to the rest of us.



4. Mr. Utley is one of the leading Billy the Kid and Lincoln County War historians and authors. In this book, he tends to lean toward accepting ideas from some of the earlier authors without further research. This book has a lot of information on Billy, some factual and some very doubtful. It does give some idea of how Billy became a fearless outlaw and is well worth reading. The reader will come away with a little better understanding of Billy's predicament and the reasons why he probably turned outlaw..



5. In 1988, 'Young Guns' was released in theatres and followed by it's sequel 'Young Guns 2: Blaze of Glory" in 1990. The popularity of these films gave birth to a re-newed interest in the story of Billy the Kid. Despite all the factual errors throughout the movies, they remained popular. Meanwhile, 1989 saw the made-for-tv movie "Gore Vidal's Billy the Kid" starring Val Kilmer as the Kid. This version was a bit more historical in its telling of the legend. Unfortunately, many people seem to think that the 'Young Guns' versions are the truth and will pass off their "expertise" to other people based on these, admittedly entertaining movies.
   
   In 1991, however, Robert Utley put forth the book "Billy the Kid: A short and violent life", in my opinion, to help disclaim all the accepted myths about the young Henry McCarty aka Henry/William Antrim aka William Bonney aka Billy the Kid. Utley is a well-researched southwest historian, focusing on the Lincoln County War and inevitably, Billy the Kid. This book is pretty simple in its layout, giving a nicely done and researched biography on the outlaw Kid. Utley gives straight facts, pieced together from old newspapers, books, and three other Billy-specialists that are generally regard as THE authorities on Billy the Kid. When finishing the book, you can't help but realize just how wrong many of the movies are, especially the two Young Guns movies. The story is a bit dry in places, but then, if not for the growing myths and greatly exaggerated stories of the Kid, he never would have been of any consequence in the history books. The Lincoln County War would have ended the same and about the only real influence the Kid had was to make Pat Garrett slightly better known.
   
   The most telling bit of this biography is dispelling the myth of the Kid's death toll. Popular myth says 21 people were killed by the Kid when in reality, he can only solely by attributed with four kills. He had a hand in 5 others but nowhere can it be proved that the Kid made the killing shot. And lastly was James Carlyle who was shot by his own posse after a random gunshot sounded out which may or maynot have come from Billy. Being generous, thats only 10 deaths that he MIGHT have had a hand in.
   
   Overall, this is a well done research biography by a respected western historian who bypasses the enflamed stories of the Kid and presents the truth as best he can. Excellent footnotes and references are included. Whether professional or just have a mild interest, this text should be in any western historian's library.

4 comments about E-man: Life in the NYPD Emergency Services.

1. This book truly captures the unselfish service of our emergency men and women. They price they pay is to place their job before their family as they risk their lives. I can only imagine climbing to the top of a bridge or talking a suicidal person down from doing something crazy. Dealing with the gruesome medical emergencies that would make your skin crawl. Being the backup for cops confronting the most dangerous of situations. These E MEN should be applauded for the work they do.
   
   In the end, this book makes you realize just the ultimate price they do pay to protect us against harms way. Further it demonstrates the unselfish nature of our service men and women. In a world that seems to focus on the negative, I love this book which focuses on the heroic acts of countless service providers. It was a pure inspiration to me and I would be shocked if they didn't turn this book into a movie or TV series.



2. I just reread the book in its new edition. I have to say it is by far the best description of life on the mean streets of the Big Apple that I have ever read. You can not put this book down and I can see myself reading it over and over as I try to remember the people who make our country great. Al Sheppard is a true hero and the funny part is I bet he doesn't even realize it. Read this book!



3. Retired NYPD Det. Al Sheppard is too humble to say so...but he is a True Hero! E-Man is an excellent book...a riveting account of his years with the prestigious Emergency Services Unit of the NYPD. There is an old saying "When a Civilian needs help, they call the Police. When Cops need help...they call the Emergency Services Unit...ESU!" I've known Al for some 17 years...and although I knew a lot about his 20 years of service with NYPD, even I didn't know most of his (and his fellow officer's) courageous exploits...detailed in this book. Buy it, read it, but be warned...You will have trouble putting this book down! --- Dr. J. Hill, Professor of Criminal Justice & Retired NJ Street Cop.



4. One of the better NYPD memoirs written in recent years. Excellent little stories from life in the NYPD Emergency Services Unit. Very interesting and a rather short book that is easy to read in a couple sittings. Two thumbs up for Officer Al Sheppard! =) Thank God for men and women like him in blue...they are America's true heroes!

5 comments about The Sixth Family: The Collapse of the New York Mafia and the Rise of Vito Rizzuto.

1. this book has it's interesting points but over all is very long and boring. i would have definately waited for the softcover and then only read it when I was out of other things to read.



2. This book covers much of the same territority as Crittle's "The Rise and Fall of Joey Massino" and although it's longer and contains more detail, it's harder to read, perhaps for that reason. Account of Vito Rizzuto's doings in Montreal, the book's subject, is reason for reading this book, but you might find it slow going, at times. Vito was convicted of murder in New York, after Canada gave him up. Seems like the FBI's game plan was and is to put all mob bosses in jail, no matter how long it takes.



3. The Sixth Family by Lee Lamothe offers a detailed look at the infiltration of sicilians and drugs into the traditional New York families through Canada. Lamothe does an admirable job connecting the dots chronologically.



4. This is a well written and brilliant book which comes from two accomplished, experienced journalists who are experts on the global history of organized crime and the Mafia. The amount of research and analysis that has gone into this book is amazing and it fully enjoys a 5 star review. The book is very detailed and can be dense at times to wade through the facts and absorb the international and national ramifications of this book. Hang in there and read it carefully, l sometimes read some chapters two or three times to grasp fully the international links of Mafia clans based in North America, South America and Europe.
   
   A branch of the Sicilian mafia has planted cells in the North and South America that have been active since the 1940's and have slowly grown into powerful criminal cartels with links all over the world. In particular Canada which is the home of the Sixth Family with clever and powerful Vito Rizzutto as first among equals. Drugs are the main game for the Sixth Family, but according to this book they are also active in counterfeiting, stock fraud and was even involved in a bizarre search for some lost gold ingots in the Philippines that used to belong to ex President Marcos, l would not even be surprised if they even made a buck out of this book too.
   
   The Bonanno mafia family from New York sent its feared enforcer Carmine Galante to Montreal in the 1950's to setup an offshoot of its own in that city. Galante succeeded so well that for years tribute flowed from Montreal to New York and that city was used to traffic drugs into the USA from the French connection and later Sicily. The Sixth Family bloomed in Montreal from the 1950's onward and gradually became the Montreal crime power in its own right as the New York influence dwindled away to nothing. This book also contains much information about the Bonanno crime family and its operations and how it tried to handle an influx of Sicilian born wise guys into its midst from the 1970's. Eventually there was much suspicion on both sides and some wiseguys ended up whacked. This is a great read for the true crime history buff



5. hell i didn't know there was one as big as the sixth family , as donnie brasco would say fughetaboutit. lol

No comments about James "Whitey" Bulger - From Winter Hill Gang Leader to Fugitive (Biography).

5 comments about Son of Scarface: A Memoir by the Grandson of Al Capone.

1. I am not an avid reader of books, since all I do is read court documents and reports every day. But when I began reading this masterfully written book by Chris Knight, I found it very difficult to put down. With every turn of the page I wanted to find out more. The suspense and the drama keeps the pages flipping as it draws you further into the story of this boy's life searching out the truth of who his father was and were he came from. The missing years that no one can account for continues to have a gripping effect as it leaves the reader wondering along with the writer as the facts of the drama unfold. I highly recommend this book for pure good reading.



2. Most of us have a proverbial 'black sheep' member of our family. It wasn't until as a 13 year old boy whose father died in his arms that Chris Knight learned that his grandfather was the notorious Chicago mafia boss Al Capone. It was at his father's funeral, attended by a large number of men previously known to Chris that he learned of his father's true identity and began what was to become his life's journey to find out all that he could about his family connection to the notorious Al Capone. Stymied by his mother's abuse and insistence that he and his sister keep his newly discovered connection a family secret, Chris was not allowed friends -- or even to go outside the gates of the family's compound. It was only when he reached adulthood that he could investigate his family's past, from his father's fraudulent birth certificate, to his mother's reluctant confirmation, to genealogical research and private investigator reports confirming and detailing Chris Knight as the grandson of one of the most notorious gangsters of the 20th Century. Of special note is the inclusion of black-and-white photos. His struggle to find out about his family's past, "Son Of Scarface: A Memoir By The Grandson Of Al Capone" is a fascinating, candid, well-written, informative biography and a highly recommended addition to community library collections.



3. ...."If this is the year of truths, Son Of Scarface is a MUST READ! by Chris Knight, Grandson of Al Capone. With tremendous courage, he uncovers secrets of his mysterious father who lived an assumed identity. Compelling and heart wrenching, a Brave Knight has written an unforgettable book in search of ones self. This book inspires us all to go beyond our comfort zone.



4. Chris Knight's story is fascinating. It's a tale that comes from the heart, and yet it's also backed by meticulous research. I enjoyed reading about Al Capone, but even more interesting is Knight's own story. This is not just a book for crime buffs, it's a story for anyone who's ever wondered where he comes from and what sorts of secrets are buried in his past.



5. This chilling new book has more twists and turns than an amusement park ride. Chris Knight uncovers the shroud of secrecy about his mysterious father Al Capone's son, William knight. The search for the truth brings revelations on leading a double life.
   Chris Knight's memoir 'Son of Scarface,'is a must read. And there are
   some interesting photographs.

3 comments about The Gold Ring: Jim Fisk, Jay Gould, and Black Friday, 1869.

1. I loved reading this account of the money game in old New York played by the masters Fisk and Gould. The story was gripping and the themes amazingly relevant to today.



2. Ackerman manages to make the financial part of this scandal easily comprehensible. He also does a great job of sketching in the principals as living, breathing characters.
   
   At the center of this tale sit Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, an unlikely team-- one a stiff, and tightly self-controlled, the other a flamboyant high-roller who lived openly with his mistress. How they hatched a plot which nearly trashed the entire US economy is more adventure than detective story.
   
   Ackerman has put his tale together with a good assortment of sources (once the gold scheme blew up, lots of people had lots to say, some of it in court), and he manages to give us just enough background for understanding without wandering off down some side street. And he shows how the fallout included the beginnings of federal regulations to protect the US economy.
   
   Originally written in 1988, this is a great piece of work and a welcome reissue (though filled with an extraordinarily large number of typos). Highly recommended.



3. The book was excellent - just what I was looking for to expand my understanding of this fascinating period of American history. But Kenneth Ackerman needs to hire a proofreader or find a new publisher. The copy of the book (paperback) that I received and read had hundreds of typographical errors - on some pages, there were more than a dozen errors - reversed letters, missing letters, missing punctuation, extra punctuation, duplicate lines. This was not what I expected for a serious historical study, nor for a book purchased from Amazon.com.

5 comments about War of the Godfathers.

1. Have to agree with Lars: Accardo is by far the most powerful mob boss in the history of this country. Where the New York mob was split and disorganized and ran a relatively small part of the country, Accardo and the outfit ran practically every other area, not just Chicago, but LA to Vegas to Kansas City and most points in between. The fact Accardo never spent a night in prison is enough to show you how good he was at what he did. Of course, Bonanno was small potatoes compared to the other NY Godfathers, so we'll never be able to tell who would have won a "real" war.



2. you people who critzed this book are stupid and it was a great book , i have read severl books written by the auther and they are great get off his back like you could write any better



3. While the way the book is attempted to be written is clever, as it is almost like a Hollywood script of real events, the book is farfetched and is downright untrue in several instances.One glaring falsehood is that Moe Dalitz was shot down an then was later poisoned in a hospital.Roemer a former FBI agent, should have known better,escpecially considering he wrote briefly about Dalitz real demise in another book.If one takes this book for what it is, a story , it is enjoyable.The one interesting factual aspect about this book is the details given to the famous "STRAWMAN" cases which largely crippled organized crime in the midwest.



4. I used to wonder how a crack former FBI agent and organized crime specialist like Bill Roemer could write glowing reviews praising the accuracy of Jay Robert Nash's sensationalist works. Then I ran across War of the Godfathers. What a novel idea--to write a novel using real people as characters. If this is any example, however, the late Mr. Roemer displayed little talent in creative fiction and the plot, revolving around a fictional gang war over Las Vegas between the Bonanno Family and the Chicago Outfit, is totally absurd. War of the Godfathers is way over the top and the nearest thing to restraint is Roemer's untypically immodest disguise of himself as a pseudonymous character. It's not especially well written and on top of everything else, the publisher didn't make it abundantly clear that this was a work of fiction. A large number of folks have been taken in by it, with fictional events such as the murder of Moe Dalitz even being reported as fact in several so-called "true crime" books. I don't understand the point of it to this day.



5. This is a book of fiction, a fact unknown by many readers (including myself) at the outset. It's a modest story with a ring of reality, but not in the same class as THE GODFATHER or other top mafia/mob fiction. It's the story of a mob struggle between the Bonanno family and the Chicago outfit to control Las Vegas in the 1980's. Yet the story fails to grab the reader as good fiction should. Perhaps that's because the real story is nicely described in CASINO (by Nicholas Pileggi), which details how Chicago and other Midwest syndicates received millions from casino skims before their scheme was uncovered in the 1980's.
   
   Author William Roemer (1926-1996) was an FBI agent assigned to the Chicago crime syndicate. He writes nicely readable prose, but Roemer does a better job with his non-fictional narratives on the Chicago outfit.

2 comments about Hello Charlie: Letters from a Serial Killer.

1. As far as true crime goes, this book was quite a disappointment. It wasn't particularly gripping, it doesn't draw particularly strong portraits of the victims, and even the three self-appointed cold case detectives seem a bit dull.
   
   Among other problems in the text, there is entirely too much background information given for each person working the case. I started skipping many pages of this material because it simply wasn't interesting. The writing style of the book just wasn't gripping, and a great deal of material could have been cut out. The narrative gets quite sidetracked more than once.
   
   And some words on the "serial killer" label on the title page: it's there to sell books. The detectives were unable to locate or identify many of the victims pointed out by Browne (the killer). In fact, the impression I got from this is that Browne, like some other killers before him, was playing with detectives, upping the number of so-called kills in order to get attention and privileges. Browne is an unreliable speaker, and you begin to feel that the narrator is unreliable just for telling you all of this without ever taking a long, long hard look at Browne's credibility.
   
   While it seems likely that Browne killed multiple times, the book makes little effort to apply psychology to why Browne claims all of these kills now. Most true crime readers are probably used to a bit of psychology in their reading, and they should be warned that it is quite absent here. This is much more of the old-fashioned-detective-work, gumshoe, knock-on-doors (no CSI) approach to crime-solving. Such a book could have made for a very intersting departure from the norm, but, again, for the reasons listed above, it does not. A little psychology would help shore up the book's crumbling foundations.
   
   Another warning to true crime fans: you're probably used to seeing pictures of the detectives, snapshots of the victims while alive, perhaps crime scenes. This book has no photos. I'm not trying to be ghoulish; I'm just pointing out a departure from the norm.
   
   All in all, this was not a satisfactory experience. A week after reading the book, I can recall only a few details about the central victim and can say very little about the killer. What I do remember is frustration with the text and annoyance with the detectives' seemingly endless credulity.



2. Books on serial killers are hardly rare, and most of them are written in a novelistic way that causes them to sensationalize the crime. This book is not your average true crime story, and rather than titillate the reader, it provides insights not usually found in most books of the genre.
   
   The book begins by detailing the disappearance of Heather Dawn Church from her home in the suburbs of Colorado Springs. It details the efforts to attempt to find her and the person responsible for her abduction. From that point, it shifts to the lives of the three men who would ultimately come together to work as volunteers on cold cases.
   
   After a relatively brief view into the apprehension and conviction of her killer, as well as his appeals, the book shifts focus again and begins to look at the aftermath of the crime. Robert Browne, who pled guilty to her murder, sent an interesting letter to the DA after he had lost all courtroom battles. The letter suggested that there were more bodies to be found, and that Browne was the responsible party.
   
   The book is a wonderful look at the way a crime is solved; not with bells and whistles, but with long, hard work. It is also a look, in depth, into the game of cat and mouse that is played by the hunted and the hunters. It offers an interesting look into the mind and psyche of a serial killer.
   
   There are no pictures, and this is not a "sensational" true crime story. Rather it is a methodical look at how police work is done in the real world. An excellent read, if you are not looking for the titillation factor.