Murderland
Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers
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Murderland
Buy Now for $33.99
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Narrated by:
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Patty Nieman
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By:
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Caroline Fraser
About this listen
'Murderland reads like a true crime thriller' SUNDAY TIMES
'Haunting, elegant and fiercely intelligent' OBSERVER
'Lyrically luminescent' NEW YORK TIMES
A terrifying true-crime history of serial killers in the Pacific Northwest and beyond - from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Prairie Fires
Caroline Fraser grew up in the shadow of Ted Bundy, the most notorious serial murderer of women in American history, surrounded by his hunting grounds and mountain body dumps, in the brooding landscape of the Pacific Northwest. But in the 1970s and 80s, Bundy was just one perpetrator amid an uncanny explosion of serial rape and murder across the region. Why so many? Why so weirdly and nightmarishly gruesome? Why the senseless rise and then sudden fall of an epidemic of serial killing?
As Murderland indelibly maps the lives and careers of Bundy and his infamous peers in mayhem - the Green River Killer, the I-5 Killer, the Night Stalker, the Hillside Strangler, even Charles Manson - Fraser's Northwestern death trip begins to uncover a deeper mystery and an overlapping pattern of environmental destruction. At ground zero in Ted Bundy's Tacoma, stood one of the most poisonous lead, copper, and arsenic smelters in the world, but it was only one among many that dotted the area.
As Fraser's investigation inexorably proceeds, evidence mounts that the plumes of western smelters not only sickened and blighted millions of lives, but also warped young minds, spawning a generation of serial killers. A propulsive non-fiction thriller, Murderland transcends true-crime voyeurism and noir mythology, taking readers on a profound quest into the dark heart of the real American berserk.
'I highly recommend it' R. F. KUANG, author of YELLOWFACE, OBSERVER
'Breathlessly propulsive . . . Fraser's prose is lyrical, elegiac' JOYCE CAROL OATES, NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
'Extraordinarily well-written and genre-defying . . . a moody masterpiece' NEW YORKER
'A powerful plea' FINANCIAL TIMES
'Compelling, beautifully written . . . at heart, a cry of outrage' WASHINGTON POST
'Wonderfully propulsive and hard to put down' ATLANTIC
'Brooding and often brave' BOSTON GLOBE
'Not to be missed' CHICAGO TRIBUNE
'Sharp, incandescent' SEATTLE TIMES
'A great writer can make art of the most grotesque material, and Fraser does' WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial Review
Critic Reviews
A big, ambitious story about the United States and the people it breeds . . . as hauntingly compulsive a nonfiction book as I have read in a long time. It gets into your blood (Dorian Lynskey)
This book is a mapping, of murderers and their victims, yes, but also of the battle between nature and society, a battle staged out on the edge of America and in the hearts of the people who live there. It started by trying to understand why so many killers come from the Pacific Northwest but by the end it had cracked open the most taboo corners of the American psyche. This story is a menace and a beauty. It left me deeply unsettled-by the idea of monsters, by the myth of free will, and by all the realms of cause and effect that remain unexplored (Wright Thompson, bestselling author of THE BARN: THE SECRET HISTORY OF A MURDER IN MISSISSIPPI)
Steel Yourself
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Perhaps toxic masculinity is exactly that -- toxic. Polluted by the fumes of smelters that pump arsenic and lead into the atmosphere.
Is that how we explain away the unexplainable? Do we blame all of the destruction caused by serial killers on underdeveloped frontal lobes and vitamin deficiencies? I guess it's better than constantly blaming their mothers.
But Caroline Fraser isn't suggesting lead pollution wipes clean the hands of these monsters. It's just another lens through which we can get a better look at these specimens of filth and depravity. Caroline grew up in the Pacific Northwest and lived near many of Bundy's crimes. She also grew up in the toxic air pollution caused by the Ruston Smelter stack.
I admit I first picked up Murderland because Ted Bundy was on the cover, looking for a pulpy true crime read that wouldn't require much thought. So I was disappointed at first to learn Caroline was going to give me a history lesson on the geology and ecology of the PNW area. But once I made it through that first chapter, I began to see the story she was weaving. Instead of listening to facts about heinous crimes like I'm ingesting junk food, I was instead confronted with not only crimes of notorious serial killers but also government and corporations who have killed and maimed even more people than Ted Bundy, the Green River killer and Israel Keyes combined.
Caroline Fraser wants us to hold these corporate murderers just as accountable as BTK. Their insanity and dark urges are just the same, but mixed with greed. What costs more, the lead poisoning of thousands of children, or turning off all smelting and slag operations? Why aren't the CEOs also being tied to the electric chair?
Don't forget -- these 'men' who hunt in the woods are not conniving geniuses and horror movie monsters. They only became prolific because we made them so. We need to see through the smoke stack and remember they are pathetic piles of slag who perhaps can sell books if they appear on the cover, but their victims are far more worthy of remembering.
Perhaps toxic masculinity is exactly that - toxic.
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While correlation does not mean causation, combined with the various attackers’ often violent family and social contexts and problems, the cited figures and studies on lead-levels in ‘murder hotspots’ are quite compelling.
The polluting corporations are also discussed. The book points out the tactics routinely used by corporations to deny the environmental and human health problems caused by their activities and/or avoid responsibility for those problems. There are also glimpses into some of the founding family businesses and their ludicrous levels of wealth accumulation.
Murderland reminds us that our health and that of our families and communities is dependent on the health of our shared environment. While disturbing in the level of violent, largely misogynistic madness it describes, Murderland is a worthy read and I will be contemplating it for a long while.
Well researched, well written and deeply disturbing
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Shit I hated it
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