Moore, M. True Crime Solved: 27 Solved Cold Cases That Bring Closure to Disturbing Crimes. True Crime Seven, 2023.
Reason read: As part of the Early Review Program for LibraryThing, I occasionally review books…duh. This book was a February choice.
Why are people so fascinated with crime? with serial killers? with unsolved cases? It must be a thing because there is a whole television network dedicated to people doing really bad things to other people and we love it. I’m no different. I requested this book out of curiosity.
Twenty-seven chapters for twenty seven crimes. Most of the time, the chapters are named for the victims, but every once in a while they showcase either the location of the death (Bear Brook) or the killer(s) like the Duval brothers or the killer clown.
Small piece of advice – parse the reading of these stories out over time. I read True Crime Solved in its entirety on a flight back to New England from Mexico. Each short chapter falls into a repetitive pattern: the crime, the policework at the time, the advent of technology revealing the name of the murderer, conviction and verdict of the trial. Every once in a while some unique or interesting piece of information would be introduced, like the teenage genealogist who helped authorities with a case or the fact that NY laws did not allow local authorities to test DNA against databases like Ancestrydotcom. Not all cases had closure like the title of the book suggests (like Butterfield was charged with the murder but chapter doesn’t mention if he was actually convicted). Other than small typos like weird capitalization or spelling issues, this was a fun read. My only wish was that it was not so formulaic.
As an aside, I had a difficult time adding this to my catalog. There are dozens of crime books on the publisher website but none really matched this particular title. Meh.
~*LunaSea*~ 