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.