The time was the early 1960's, when the Boston area was traumatized by a series of rape-murders believed to be perpetrated by a single predator who came to be known as the Boston Strangler. What makes Junger's account so riveting is that the man who eventually confessed to being the Boston Strangler worked on a construction job in the Junger home. Indeed, he was working there on the day of the Goldberg murder. There is even a chilling photograph, included in the book, of a smiling Albert DeSalvo standing over the baby Sebastian and his doting mother. Although DeSalvo did not confess to the Goldberg murder, Junger explores the likelihood that the man in the photograph killed Bessie Goldberg on the day he was working in Junger's home.
What more could a writer wish for, especially one who has written so successfully about the confluence of elements? He is at the center of a near-perfect storm of evidence pointing to his family's workman as the real murderer. To raise the stakes even further, Junger tells us, in his mother's words, about the day, before the Goldberg murder, when DeSalvo was alone with his mother in the Junger home: "I heard him come in, and two or three minutes later I heard him call me. So I opened the door to the cellar, and I saw him down there at the foot of the stairs and he was looking at me. And he was looking in a way that is almost indescribable. He had this intense look in his eyes, a strange kind of burning in his eyes, as if he was almost trying to hypnotize me. As if by sheer force of will he could draw me down into that basement." Junger then adds his own words: "Clearly he wanted to get her down into the basement, and clearly if she did that things could go very wrong. My mother told him that she was busy, and then she closed the basement door and shot the bolt." These descriptions were, of course, made with the benefit of hindsight, years after DeSalvo confessed to being the Boston Strangler. At the time of her encounter with the workman, Junger's mother, though concerned, told no one neither her husband nor the construction boss about DeSalvo. "Did she really want to get a man fired for the look in his eyes?" Junger asks rhetorically. "A Death in Belmont," though nonfiction, reads like a novel. Its narrative line is crisp. Junger takes us through the trial and conviction of Roy Smith, the series of stranglings in and around Boston, and the arrest and confession of Albert DeSalvo. But there are threads left untied by the imperfect system of Massachusetts justice that Junger describes so well. For the book to work, there must be a payoff. If the man in the photograph turned out not to be the murderer of Junger's neighbor, or not to be the Boston Strangler at all, where would the payoff be? It is not enough that the Junger family had a story that was perfect. It is important that the story be true, or at least highly likely. And it is here that Junger's methodology raises concerns. Although he acknowledges that "often the truth simply isn't knowable" and that this story is "far messier" than the perfect one he has grown up with he still tries too hard to fit the messy facts into his payoff narrative. Junger coaxes his readers into believing that Smith was probably innocent (though he was never vindicated by the legal system), that DeSalvo was probably the Boston Strangler (though this is still disputed) and that with Smith out of the picture, the man who killed Goldberg becomes exactly the man DeSalvo claimed he was (though there is little evidence to support this surmise). A first-rate reporter, Junger provides his readers with all the appropriate caveats: "I would never know for sure how close I had come to losing my mother." But in the end, the reader at least this reader finds himself wanting to believe in the payoff, as the author wants to believe in the truth of his family's perfect story. Have you told a friend today? http://bookcrossing.com/tellafriend Archives and email list settings: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BookCrossing Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BookCrossing/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BookCrossing/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
