Customer Reviews

Crossing to Kill: The True Story of the Serial-Killer Playground

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I'm sorry that I bought this, and sorrier that I read it. I would still like to understand how Sharif Sharif, an oil company chemist, apparently a serial rapist, was able to commit multiple rapes, with little punishment, and was deported, not back to Egypt, but to Mexico. The author contends that Sharif committed rapes and murders in Juarez, and then master-minded more from behind bars.

The book would have been much improved by background information on the rape cases, and the involvement of his oil-company employers in helping him get off with little or no punishment. The author's speculations and personal opinions were substituted for actual investigation of facts and court records. A two-page tirade about the abnormality of homosexuality and frequent quotes from Colin Wilson don't make up for lack of solid investigative work.

The author did have some interesting ideas about how the young women killed were exploited by the factories which employed them, then by their attackers, and then by feminist political groups. I'd go a little further and say that the author joined in and exploited the victims as well, as there are few attempts to accurately reconstruct these women's lives or portray them as real people. There are quotations from other authors, a lot of philosphical ramblings (until you think you are reading an endless freshman comp lit paper), but little compassion, and quite a bit of breathless fascination with Sharif's cunning, charisma, and personal appearance.

A complete mess - all filler and no content. The one star is mandatory, so given grudgingly.

Reads like smarty-pants college kid took a Newsweek article and fluffed it out with shaky theories about Aztec mythology, stirred in some other convoluted extrapolations that bore no clear connection to these crimes. Why do factual research when you can waffle and include material on unrelated pet topics?

I am no wiser about the subject and I will never get back the four hours I took to read the book.

One of the oddest and most far-ranging true-crime titles I've ever read. Some idea of its scope can be had from the fact that the author, in discussing the Egyptian/Muslim background of the serial killer in question (one Sharif Omar), actually touches down in Afghanistan and describes rapes committed by a highly misogynistic set of men called the Taleban. Not so surprising, you might think, but this is in a book first published in 2000. The author's obvious animus against organized religion paid off there, in a sick kinda way, but I wasn't so happy about his attacks on the Catholic church, which has undoubtedly done far more good in the Mexican context than harm. On the other hand, there were some vivid descriptions of Mexican life (and wildlife) and settings and a fascination with the minutiae of human psychology and behavior to set against the strong and even bigoted opinions expressed, and I feel myself attracted almost against my will into a second read. Not only have I never read a true-crime book that explained why jaguars' eyes glow at night, I never imagined it was possible, let alone that it might be relevant to the psychology of serial killing. I'm not sure there's method in the madness of connexions like that but watching them being drawn was sometimes fun.