Review: Strand, Killer on the Road (2012)

[truepenny]

Killer on the Road: Violence and the American Interstate by Ginger Strand

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


So this book is about interstate highways and serial killers and the horrible ways in which they combine. Reading it was acutely unpleasant, because Strand shows so clearly how the interstates got us to where we are today, in the collision of climate change and consumer capitalism, with urban sprawl and the ghetto-ization of minority communities, and all the other terrible effects the interstates have had on America and American culture. And, as Strand notices, the interstates and the serial killers spread hand in hand. She talks about Charles Starkweather, Ed Kemper, Wayne Williams (or the Atlanta child murders, since it looks pretty clear that Williams was not responsible for all of them, or even most of them), Roger Reece Kibbe and a bunch of other highway serial killers you've never heard of, the phenomenon of the long-haul trucker/serial killer, and she finishes by talking about Juarez and Mexican modernization and the creepy correlation between a nation's highways and its murders.

Strand suffers from the true crime writer's weird compulsion to distance herself from the people who are interested in her subject matter (true crime writers seem to believe that their audience's interest is low brow, vulgar, and vaguely distasteful, while their OWN interest is, you know, none of those things) and I caught her out on some minor factual things, but she writes well and deals with her material cogently. Her argument is both horrifying and persuasive.



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