This tells the true story of a serial killer in New York City in the 1990s, but because his victims were gay, the story mostly stayed under the radar.
I'm always a fan of true crime, and I thought this did a good job of thoroughly researching and explaining the series of murders, and the victims, and the context of the AIDS epidemic as well as the culture within law enforcement. One of the points made was that the victims never really had their stories told, because of their sexual preferences, so Green's approach does a great job of finally giving them the voice they deserved.
However, Green goes into detail about the background of lots of tangential individuals as well, so parts of it ended up dragging, as I tried to determine who among these people actually mattered. (At one point another serial killer was introduced, and had a paragraph on him...but was never revisited. What happened to him?!)
The organization was also not particularly clear. It proceeds linearly for the first half, and then jumps around in time once the killer is identified, but I was never sure about why. I also found it surprising that so little time is spent on the killer's trial for the murders. We get a lot of details about two previous trials he faced--in both of which he was acquitted--but very little on the trial for the crimes the book is based on.
If you're a true crime fan, this is definitely good, and it's very short and quick to get through. Not my favorite, but interesting to learn about a case that didn't get much publicity at the time.
I'm always a fan of true crime, and I thought this did a good job of thoroughly researching and explaining the series of murders, and the victims, and the context of the AIDS epidemic as well as the culture within law enforcement. One of the points made was that the victims never really had their stories told, because of their sexual preferences, so Green's approach does a great job of finally giving them the voice they deserved.
However, Green goes into detail about the background of lots of tangential individuals as well, so parts of it ended up dragging, as I tried to determine who among these people actually mattered. (At one point another serial killer was introduced, and had a paragraph on him...but was never revisited. What happened to him?!)
The organization was also not particularly clear. It proceeds linearly for the first half, and then jumps around in time once the killer is identified, but I was never sure about why. I also found it surprising that so little time is spent on the killer's trial for the murders. We get a lot of details about two previous trials he faced--in both of which he was acquitted--but very little on the trial for the crimes the book is based on.
If you're a true crime fan, this is definitely good, and it's very short and quick to get through. Not my favorite, but interesting to learn about a case that didn't get much publicity at the time.