Review by Booklist Review
As submitted for review, this first nonquickie book on Milwaukee's grisly serial murderer is full of grammatical gaffes and inept wordings. It's a major book, though, because Schwartz, who was in Dahmer's apartment less than an hour after his arrest, broke the story, making her account a primary document. It's important, too, because, eschewing amateur psychologizing and social pontificating, Schwartz simply reports how the case ignited smoldering issues of police conduct, racism, homophobia, judicial responsibility, media responsibility, even of neighborliness in a newly polyglot city. She doesn't dwell ghoulishly on Dahmer's crimes but shows how collective astonishment at how he killed seemingly under everybody's noses sent cops, neighbors, reporters, politicians, the poor blacks and Asian immigrants among whom Dahmer lived, and the gay community Dahmer made his hunting ground into a frenzy of finger-pointing at each other. A major revelation she makes is that the victims had criminal records and/or were habitu{{‚}}es of the homosexual demimonde, which facts she uses to argue--actually, to borrow the argument of one of the police investigators--that they weren't struck down by Dahmer by sheer coincidence but facilitated their own demises by consenting to assignation with a total stranger. A riveting, soul-grilling read that may, by the time it's published, include the verdict reached in Dahmer's trial. (Reviewed Mar. 1, 1992)1559721170Ray Olson
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Schwartz, the Milwaukee Journal reporter who first broke the Dahmer story of murder and cannibalism in July 1991, here presents a superficial account of the case. The book is redeemed only by the chapters detailing the impact of the crimes on the city and those showing the media responding to the sensationalism of the revelations in a kind of feeding frenzy. Especially unsatisfactory is the psychological analysis of Dahmer, which has little depth. Additionally, Schwartz is a writer of only average ability. Photos not seen by PW. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Dahmer strangled 17 young gay men (most of them black), sexually molested the corpses, then dismembered and photographed the bodies. He stored some of the heads in the freezer--others he boiled, bleached, painted, and kept as mementos. He was arrested in July 1991 when a potential victim managed to escape and reported the incident to the police. The Milwaukee Journal reporter who broke the story recounts Dahmer's background, details each of the murders, considers the divisive effects the case had on the city, and examines the role of the media in reporting sensational crimes. Schwartz's approach to this grisly material is straightforward, and her first-hand account of the process of covering the story of a lifetime is fascinating. She is less successful at drawing a convincing portrait of the killer, and her efforts at psychological analysis are perfunctory. The notoriety of this case will undoubtedly spawn more complete and insightful accounts, but in the meantime, this book will satisfy an immediate interest on the part of true-crime readers.-- Ben Harrison, East Orange P.L., N.J. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Impressively detailed account of the Jeffrey Dahmer serial- murder case. Schwartz, covering crime for the Milwaukee Journal, was the first reporter to reach Dahmer's apartment after police found a human head in his refrigerator. In this first-person account, drawing on in-depth research, the reporter covers every angle of the case and also provides an interesting running commentary on her crime-reporter's beat. After a Grand Guignol catalogue of Dahmer's apartment and descriptions of interviews with his neighbors (``We used to hear sawing...at all hours''), Schwartz offers telling details of Dahmer's childhood--unremarkable except for a streak of cruelty to animals; adolescence--he was the class clown, with a drinking problem; and young adulthood--Dahmer dismembered his first victim at 18, then joined the Army, where he got poor marks as a medical corpsman (he could not stand to take blood samples). Schwartz digs hard to find out why Dahmer wasn't recognized and stopped sooner--when arrested for 17 murders, he had twice been through the court system for sex crimes and was under the supervision of a probation officer--but comes up with no definitive answer. According to one expert on serial murderers, she reports, thousands of people fit the profile, but there's no way to predict who will kill. Schwartz's account includes notes on the work of the forensic anthropologist who matched the jumble of skeletal remains to the individual victims; talks with victim's families; and coverage of the storm of controversy--pitting the Milwaukee police chief against his own men, black cops against white cops, and the city's black, gay, and Laotian communities against all cops--that arose when it was revealed that, two months before his arrest, when a naked and bleeding Laotian boy escaped from the killer's home, Dahmer was investigated by three white cops but not taken in. And, in fact, the boy was returned to Dahmer. Definitive--a must read for true-crime votaries. (Sixteen pages of photos--not seen.)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
