The man from the train

Whoa, this was one incredible book. Bill James (yes, the baseball stat guy) and his daughter uncover facts of a serial killer who murdered whole families, bludgeoning them to death with the blunt side of an axe, during a nearly 20 year reign of hidden terror. Starting here in Massachusetts, he would take a train, get off, slaughter an entire household and be back on the train before anyone even knew.

And given the primitive detecting methods and spotty communication, no one, before this book, actually ties together all of these terrible events. The authors make the case, step by step, explaining why they think a particular slaughter is his, or maybe not his, and track his movements across the South and then to the West coast and back. Why hasn't the connection been made before? The authors believe it is due to just finding it hard to believe anyone could actually do it. But they make a pretty air tight case for most of the killings.

They even track down who they think the monster is. And manage to tie him to a famous family killing in Germany after 1912!

It can be some gruesome reading. And the names can be hard to keep track of. But the James' keep it interesting. I particularly like how he breaks the fourth wall and talks directly to the reader, bringing us into their thinking and rational. They also spend lots of time discussing police practices (or, more specifically, the lack thereof) and how society reacted to these killings. All too often, a local scapegoat was found and at least 4 times, executed wrongly and several others were just lynched. Ugly.

I literally could not put it down, skipping chores to read Just One More Chapter. I can't recommend this book enough!

4.5 stars

I have quite a few caveats for this book, and yet I still gave it a 4.5, which is proof of how much I enjoyed reading it. But I do want to list those caveats so that people can make an informed decision about whether the book is for them.

First of all, I can totally understand why some people might not like this book. Bill James is a much more casual, even irreverent writer than most who are writing about such dark topics. If you don't like his approach, it could put you off the whole book. And that's fair enough.

Second, this book could have really, really benefited by some appendices. There's a chart at one point in the book comparing a few of the murders that would have been hugely helpful if it was expanded to include all the ones he talked about and provided in the back of the book. A map showing all the murder locations would have been even better. I don't know why this didn't occur to anyone at the publishing company but it would have helped with clarity.

Because James doesn't go chronologically. He starts in the middle, goes back to the beginning, jumps to the end. This could be extremely frustrating for a reader who isn't expecting that, though it didn't bother me too much.

What James and his daughter Rachel have done is gone through newspapers from the last decade of the 19th century and the first few of the 20th and make notes of every murder incident that fits a certain pattern: near a train station or railroad, everyone in the house murdered with the blunt end of an ax, and several other details. They use the patterns they discovered to prove their thesis: that there was a serial killer riding the railroads during these years, that he went from place to place across the country killing entire families in their beds. It's grisly stuff, and if you have a weak stomach you probably wouldn't enjoy reading about the details.

But for those of us who are fascinated by true crime, it's rewarding to watch someone, a century-plus after the events, piece together what happened. I find their evidence compelling; I believe they have indeed located a pattern and there was a serial killer who was responsible for many of these murders. They list several dozen incidents and distinguish between those they think were definitely committed by their "Man from the Train" because of certain criteria being met, those they think likely were but perhaps weren't, and those they think weren't committed by their man at all. It's a through argument, and I accepted it.

A little less convincing is the fact that they actually name the man they think is the killer. I would say that it's certainly possible that they're right, but I'm not as certain as they are. At this distance of time, it's a pretty presumptuous thing to do, to point the finger at someone who's been dead for decades. A little afterword tying the string of killings to an infamous slaughter in Europe is specious, in my opinion, but it would be fun (if anything involving serial killers can be fun) if it was true.

I think this book does exactly what it sets out to do: convince readers that the authors have located a pattern which proves the existence of an early 20th-century serial killer that most people at the time never realized existed because they didn't have the resources to connect one murder in one state to another in another. I also found it enjoyable in the way good true crime can be. If you like true crime, can handle James's style and manage to follow the zigzagging chronology, I think it's definitely worth reading.