Customer Reviews

Why?: The Serial Killer in America

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

 

 

I don't mean to sound like a high school student who was just told that they have to read Beowulf, but this totally sucks. The "factual" mistakes in the forward alone caused me to question just how many of her statements within the main text would be correct (e.g., "Richard" Dahmer, the inception of the M'Naughten Rule, as well as her overly generous view of the current capability to predict future violence). I finally gave up reading it because I didn't want to have a head full of incorrect knowledge. Hey, being the occasional pedant is bad enough; being a misinformed one is even worse :) Avoid this book!

At first glance it would seem to be difficult to ruin a biography of Edmund Kemper. Kemper is a 6-foot 9-inch, intellectually-gifted sociopath, who killed his grandparents when he was a teenager. After his imprisonment in a mental hospital, he conned the authorities into believing that he was cured and they released him from custody. Kemper then went on to kill eight more people, including his mother, before he turned himself in to police. (He currently is serving life in prison).

Amazingly, author Margaret Cheney rises to the occasion and finds a way to sabotage her own story.

To be fair, even Cheney cannot completely ruin a story this good. Why has some good aspects, which is why I gave it two stars rather than one. Some of the stories concerning Kemper both fascinate and revolt. For instance, Kemper, while under supervised relief from prison, drove to his psychiatrist's office with the head of one of his victims in the trunk of his car; the same psychiatrist subsequently declared that Kemper was no longer a danger to society. Cheney also gives a good description of several California towns (especially Santa Cruz) as they were in the 1960s and 1970s. Finally, although Cheney's account of Kemper's crimes appears to be taken almost verbatim from his audio-taped confession, it is still interesting reading.

Unfortunately, with Why the bad far outweighs the good. During the last 65 pages of the book, Kemper almost completely disappears so that Cheney can bloviate on everything that is wrong with the United States. A typical line reads "We may look at the socio-sexual milieu in which patriarchal, Orestean crimes are able to feed and grow..." (p. 213). Cheney subjects her reader to dozens of pages filled with similar, mind-numbing gibberish.

For an author who wants her readers to believe that she is exceptionally sensitive to society's problems, Cheney is remarkably tone-deaf to the bad taste in Why. When one of Kemper's victims drifts ashore on the ocean tides, she sardonically describes it as "a case of the crime returning to the scene of the murderer" (p. 59). Similarly, when Cheney recounts Kemper's aimless driving after a murder, she notes that he was "now killing only time" (p. 95).

Due to Cheney, Why is a failure. I certainly sympathize with the reviewer who was unable to finish reading Why. While I would not go so far as to say that the last 65 pages of this book are the worst thing ever printed, I wouldn't spend much time arguing if someone else said it.

Wow, what a monster. I love reading about this man. It amazes me that he is still alive. This is a very good book to read if you are as fascinated with serial killers as I. I am still waiting for someone to make a movie of this guy.