Carlton Smith

I like true crime, and The Search for the Green River Killer is one of the better books I've read about serial murder. The case, which the Seattle Police first noticed in 1982, did not come to a conclusion untl 2003, and Carlton Smith details every step, every mistake, every success that occurred in those 21 years. It was an interesting book, fluently narrated, but gruesome and upsetting as such books are. The Green River Killer, who was eventually convicted of forty-six (46) counts of show more murder of young female prostitutes, was a psychopath with no remorse over the way he treated his victims before and after their death, and it chills me to the bone that such people exist. show less

Just got this back from a friend, so I am able enter a review under the correct edition. "The Search..." is an excellent title as this covers the crime from the police investigators' view. The dead-end trails, sought for clues and hopes dashed amid managing a large task force and trying to embrace and benefit from early computer technology tell an intriguing story of a community seeking to remove a killer.

I found the beginning of this book to be tedious and unnecessarily slow. I get the need to paint a picture for the reader and to set the scene, but I don't need to go back 100 years in the past of the town the crime took place, I don't need to know how and by whom the town was founded. And I don't need to know how far back the murderers and conspirators can trace their lineage. However, once the book finally moved away from that and onto the actual families and people in intimately involved show more in the crime, I found the book engrossing and a fast-paced, interesting read that I really did quite enjoy. I was surprised and disappointed to find out, however, that ironically while the beginning of the book was slow and tedious with unnecessary and uninteresting information that had nothing or at least very little to do with the actual people and the actual crime, the end of the book (especially the last chapter) not only went too fast to the point of giving the feeling of being rushed but the author never said how the jury trial went. Whether Joel and Dana were convicted, and if so what their sentence was. He never mentioned what became of Jack Ponce and Peter Radovcich, either. Nor whatever happened with Monica Zent and her father. A lot of unanswered questions and an open-ended ending. Also, the author seems to have some kind of an odd disdain for people who are part of Generation X that I find eyebrow-raising at best, and oddly attributes Dana and Joel being part of this generation as at least reason in part for the way they "turned out," for lack of a better phrasing, which makes no sense whatsoever. The meat of the book was interesting and I easily got lost in it, but overall because of the beginning and lackluster (and incomplete) ending, it's not anything special. I'd recommend it to other true crime fans, but I would feel an obligation to caution them about the problems with the ending. I will admit that the ending is the way it is because the book was published a year before the outcome of the jury trials, but that really only means that perhaps the author should've waited a little longer to publish. It's also possible there is an updated version of this book that I don't know about. But that isn't the book I read, and I don't read true crime novels to create my own ending or have to Google the actual outcome. show less

I really liked the way this book was written -- just the facts. That was enough to make the whole situation horrific, and I'm really glad the author didn't embellish with his own speculations. Since it was mostly reporting on what other people said in interviews as the police were investigating Randy Roth, there was plenty of speculation there already, but that was fine. Do I think that was fine because I didn't like this guy anyway? Maybe. :-)