The book’s a meld of true crime, memoir and social commentary, but with a mission: to shock readers into a deeper understanding of the American Nightmare, ecological devastation entwined with senseless sadism. Murderland is not for the faint of heart, yet we can’t look away: Fraser’s writing is that vivid and dynamic ... A superb and disturbing vivisection of our darkest urges, this summer’s premier nonfiction read.
Extremely disturbing ... Intellectual framework underpins but never impedes the momentum of Fraser’s compelling, beautifully written text ... This propulsive narrative is buttressed by extensive research documented in voluminous footnotes. With facts at her fingertips, she disdains to pretend objectivity ... This is a cautionary tale, not a triumphal one, and Fraser closes with a passionate, angry passage whose biblical cadences ring with righteous fury.
Fans of linear narratives will find this book maddening ... Fraser’s book works best as a literary theme — crimes of industry choking the life out of the natural world, spawning crimes of the heart.
Unique ... She makes the unconventional argument that the rise of serial killing has deep roots in the creation of industrial waste. The connection isn’t as far-fetched as it may appear ... Setting up a tripartite structure of murder, industrial history, and memoir is a complicated task. Fraser comes close to pulling it off, as Murderland is wonderfully propulsive and hard to put down. But in casting about for a grand unified theory connecting serial murder to a larger environmental phenomenon, Fraser falls into a trap ... Although Fraser does her damnedest to avoid it, Bundy repeatedly steals focus from the muck of smelter waste. Perhaps it’s inevitable that systemic, slow-motion violence feels less dramatic than individuals killing individuals ... There is value in seeing a bigger picture, and I’m glad to have followed the threads that Fraser unspooled. But there is equal, if not greater, value in accepting what we don’t, and can’t, know.
Initially, Murderland seems as crazy as the killers it portrays. But Fraser...has the skills to pull it off, and once she gets going, the theory she espouses seems plausible.
A blend of memoir, biography and history ... Reads like a true crime thriller ... All of this is grim stuff, although Fraser handles it in a non-queasy way. She can’t prove that industrial lead was the culprit and there are other obvious explanations for the rise in serial killing ... But Fraser does build a compelling theory.
While the lead-crime hypothesis is provocative, Murderland provides limited substantive evidence to support causality between lead exposure and violent crime in the 1970s ... One wishes Fraser had devoted more pages to exposing corporate criminals such as Woodruff and Pinto than to better-known serial killers such as Bundy and his ilk.
Isn’t merely convincing; it’s downright damning, showing how lead seeped into literally every aspect of life for those who lived near a smelter ... A narrative that is gripping, harrowing, and timely.
She creates a distinctive true crime offering, melding accounts of notorious murderers with historical and cultural happenings ... Detailed, mesmerizing ... True crime fans will find Murderland a ravenous read.
