A true-crime history of serial killers in the Pacific Northwest and beyond—an investigation of how a new strain of psychopath emerged out of a toxic landscape of deadly industrial violence
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.
An extraordinarily well-written and genre-defying blend of memoir, social and environmental history, and forensic inquest ... A granular, if poetic attempt to solve two related mysteries ... Fraser waxes in a self-consciously Lynchian register, with stygian and hallucinatory descriptions of the Pacific Northwest ... Murderland is exhaustive—four hundred dense, conscientious pages ... Murderland is something of a moody masterpiece. Fraser is an outstanding social, cultural, and environmental historian, and she has an effortless way of turning pontoon bridges into villains. As a persuasive work of criminology, however, her book leaves something to be desired ... There are moments in the book where Fraser pauses to hedge her bets.
