Rating: 
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"If anyone is found slain, lying in the field in the land which the LORD your God is giving you to possess, and it is not known who killed him, then your elders and your judges shall go out and measure the distance from the slain man to the surrounding cities. And it shall be that the elders of the city nearest to the slain man will take a heifer which has not been worked and which has not pulled with a yoke. The elders of that city shall bring the heifer down to a valley with flowing water, which is neither plowed nor sown, and they shall break the heifer's neck there in the valley." -- Deuteronomy 21:1-3 (NKJV)
It's a serious problem when murders go unsolved. The murderer may strike again. People are unsettled in their beds. Everyone's sense of justice is offended. While the Israelites were directed by the Bible to sacrifice a heifer as atonement, police officers and families of victims today often have no recourse but to feel frustrated. In recent years, there's hope. The Vidocq Society (named after the famed detective who was in many ways a model for Sherlock Holmes) takes on cold cases at the request of the police to see what the best and brightest may be able to accomplish. The Murder Room is the story of how the society was founded, the personalities of the key founders, and some of the key cases they have helped crack.
I thought that the best part of the book came in the insights provided by the four murderous profiles that Richard Walter developed and applied with great aptitude in The Murder Room to identify what kind of suspect to expect and what the murderous motivations were. It takes a strong stomach to absorb some of this information. Serial murderers aren't quite the same as you and me in their interests. The facial reconstruction work done by artist Frank Bender is also quite interesting, but not at the same level as Walter's work. I was pleased to see that the book is generously illustrated so that you can see what is being described about Bender's cases.
Before praising the book too highly, I must also point out that it rambles a lot. There's more in here than you probably want to know about Frank Bender's seemingly insatiable extramarital sex life, and the cases are chopped up in such a way that you may often feel as if there's not enough continuity to the story telling.
It's a good book to take along for a two week vacation because you can dabble into it a bit, find something interesting to settle into, and then be ready to do something more active when the pace or the content doesn't please you as much. I usually just sit down and ready nonfiction books from cover to cover. This one I dawdled through, and I think I enjoyed it more because of that bit-by-bit pace.
Rating: 
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This book is about a fascinating group of men and women who created a "club" with the purpose of solving unsolved murders. The three central "characters" in this true story each have a genius that enables them to do the seemingly supernatural when it comes to solving crimes. Each of the characters are fascinating and their abilities cause you to shake your head over and over again in amazement.
Having said that, you should be warned that this is a VERY dark book. The most heinous crimes are described and discussed in graphic detail. The work required to solve the cases involves corpses and long descriptions of the thoughts and actions of the killers. The crime solving wizards, two of them in particular, live in dark worlds that are far from normal or functional. They are good men, in the sense that they are passionate about justice, bringing the guilty to reckoning, and bringing closure and peace to families who are desperate for answers. But they flawed and in some cases, significantly so.
In terms of the writing, it leaves much to be desired. The book is severely disjointed. The first 3rd to half of the book is quite difficult to follow. The writer jumps forward and back in time attempting to create drama, which could have worked well, but in this case only serves to create confusion and jar the reader. You find yourself reading several pages of a new chapter wondering what the heck the writer is talking about because it has NO connection to anything you've read up to this point.
****************** Slight Spoiler Alert ********************************
The writer takes you through many of the cases in detail throughout the book. One of the techniques used to create drama is to leave you hanging in the middle of a case and moving on to another case which keeps you in suspense regarding the outcome. This is effective, but sets up the biggest disappointment of the whole book.
Several of the cases are "bigger" in the book than all the rest, and you are strung along with these cases for almost the entire book. The writer could have brought conclusion to each of these cases in any order he chose. But one case is focused on above all others and the desire for closure on that case is built above all others. This author chooses to wrap the book with this particular case open. We never find out what happens. The book just ends. I felt like I had been conned. I know its avante-gard in this post-modern world of ours to not have a happy ending, but in this case, after so much death and staring into the bleakest possible form of human depravity and evil, we needed SOME redemption. The author had plenty of opportunities to give it to us since so many of the cases were wrapped up so brilliantly. But alas, we are strung along for a climax that is anything but. It was a real disappointment.
Rating: 
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This is a must read for all "true crime" fans as well as anyone who appreciates reading about people who are the very best in their field. As an artist, I am particularly impressed by the astounding work of forensic sculptor Frank Bender. I honestly had not heard of the Vidocq Society before and was just fascinated by the work they do and their rate of success solving cold cases. A word of warning - some of the murder and other cases are very graphically described and a few of the photographs are disturbing. But don't let that stop you from reading this "can't put it down" book.
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The Murder Room is a terrific book. I thought it was altogether masterful, brilliantly structured, continually alive with suspense and at times the outer reaches of the inconceivable; and enfolding an almost symphonic scope of emotion. Just an amazing achievement. In the wide loss of any true sense of wonder, this book carries a powerful, reminding reverberation of what wonder really is. The Greeks, who I happen to love to teach and to whom the author alludes as a sort of underlying leitmotif, got it right; there is no wonder without the darkest tragedy, but he avoids the noir sensationalism a weaker writer might have given way to, and by holding the book squarely in that dark key of wonder, manages to make it more that just a fantastic read; he makes it prophetic. I found myself thinking quite often, my god, the author has managed to made the topic of murder itself a challenge to many of the de rigueur presumptions of the present time--not least the disavowal of evil itself. A thriller and a symposium, all wrapped up in one.
John Diamond-Nigh
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On August 02, 2010 at 6:43 AM, I received the following notification from Amazon:
As someone who has purchased or rated THE INNOCENT MAN: MURDER AND INJUSTICE IN A SMALL TOWN by John Grisham, you might like to know that THE MURDER ROOM: THE HEIRS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES GATHER TO SOLVE THE WORLD'S MOST PERPLEXING COLD CASES will be released on August 10, 2010. You can pre-order yours at a savings of $10.40 by following the link below.
I did not read it closely and thought that THE MURDER ROOM sounded like a novel worth reading. I read novels to help me lose weight. Good novels distract me from awareness while on exercise machines and cause me to lose track of the miles I put in!
For a novel, the organizational structure seems very choppy and the storyline seemed too unrealistic and too fantastic to approximate reality. I almost stopped reading it until I realized I was reading the history of the Vidocq Society. It is not a novel, but a description of a series of investigations. A novelist would never produce a book that was so utterly far from reality. THE MURDER ROOM is stranger than fiction. Facts external from THE MURDER ROOM back up the reality. I am very pleased that Amazon notified me.
I often teach criminal justice majors. I am recommending THE MURDER ROOM for their reading list! This fantastic book helped me lose some pounds!
In association with Amazon.com
