Murderland:

This book is most unusual. Ostensibly a true-crime narrative that investigates the serial killer Ted Bundy and others such as the Green River Killer, the Night Stalker, the Hillside Strangler, Zodiac, Charles Manson [et. al.] - linked in terms of their murderous activity to –

[a] The geography of the Pacific North West of America., both natural as in the Olympic-Wallowa Lineament [OWL] fault line, as well as man-made  structures like the regional “floating bridges” with their problematic ‘reversible car lanes’.

[b] The events and socio-political turmoil of America in the 1970s to the 1980s.

[c] Heavy industry and the chemical poisoning that resulted from the smelters [metal extraction and purification from molten ores] before environmental safeguards came into being with the E.P.A.

And [d] the authors’ own ‘coming of age’ in that region and age.

The title has inserted “Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers “as a suffix of sorts which acts as a warning - because this is a disturbing [and at times distressing] work, but one that provokes deep-thought amidst the revelations and the revulsion that the author knits from.

The author is an award-winning journalist and writer / biographer / academic - though the writing style far from academia, instead, it’s conversational which corrals the reader into some dark places, dark postulations, with screamingly whispered horrors - all triangulated in terms of time, place and ecology until it reads like a historical thriller.

The origins, influences and wealth of the American dynasties of the Guggenheim and Rockefeller families, of industrial organisations such as the American Smelting and Refining Company [ASARCO], the Ethyl Corporation, Automotive and Petro-Chemical Operations are sprinkled into the narrative together with anecdotal [as well as direct linkages] to the heavy metal pollutants such as Lead, Zinc, Cadmium, Arsenic among many of the transition elements [and toxic gases] that seeped into the air and soil of the American North West.

Fraser provides a lengthy [and interesting] appendix in the form of a series of source notes, detailing her research findings [chapter by chapter]. This forces the reader to flick back and fro, as the narrative progresses in its surreal journey.

The poisoning of minds and bodies continues as the pollution pervades the landscape as well as the culture. The area of Tacoma, Washington with its polluted land and waterways is referenced as an influence on novelists who lived there - Dashiell Hammett, one of the grandfathers of the Noir Thriller [The Maltese Falcon], and also on Frank Herbert, the grandfather of Ecological Science Fiction [Dune].

I found the ‘coming of age’ anecdotes from the authors own life interesting diversions [or intermissions] from the darkness of capitalistic industrial chemistry that the author tries to align to the phenomenon of serial killing.

Though there may be a causal link [or influence] between large scale industrial pollution with mental impairment – but when you consider the vast majority of the aforementioned serial killers referenced in this book to be white men; when half the affected population from the pollution are women, and that is without referencing the genetic / racial make-up of the serial killers [white], the author’s argument of a direct causal correlation comes into question.

Murderland is an obsessive work, which could be considered a labour of love despite its dark subject matter. It is a dense narrative that provokes deep-thought, making interesting commentary - even if the conclusion [the author wants the reader to embrace] is ultimately masked and confused like the clouds of toxic fumes billowing out of the chimney stacks of the industrial smelters.

A worthy read that weaves Toxic Masculinity into a Chemically Toxic Environment – well worth your time.